Live updates: Trump says coronavirus pandemic will ‘get worse before it gets better’ as daily death toll tops 1,000

NEW DELHI — Every fifth person in Delhi may have been infected with the coronavirus, according to a new serological survey, indicating the scale of exposure to the pandemic in India where the testing rate per capita remains low.

The study conducted by the National Centre for Disease Control shows the presence of antibodies in over 23 percent of the 21,387 people randomly selected for testing. The antibody tests indicate the prevalence of the infection at a community level.

The findings also imply that a large number of infected persons remain asymptomatic and go undetected. Majority of the population in Delhi remains vulnerable to the virus and the federal government said that strict containment measures need to continue. The government has, however, repeatedly denied that community transmission is underway in the country.

The state of Delhi, which includes the capital New Delhi, had been projected to have over 500,000 cases by the end of July but has seen just over 125,000 cases. On Monday, for the first time in weeks, the new infections went below 1,000.

“If you look at the data from Delhi, it does suggest that we seem to have flattened the curve and, maybe, are showing a downward trend,” said Randeep Guleria, the country’s top pulmonologist to the Indian Express. “But, considering the trend in other cities and even in the U.S., having crossed the peak doesn’t mean that you can let your guard down.”

India is now the third worst-affected country in the world with over 1.1 million cases. Only United States and Brazil have more.

Home-improvement giant Lowe’s doesn’t plan to have its employees enforce its new face mask mandate out of concern for their safety, the Charlotte Observer reported on Tuesday.

Lowe’s was one of a slew of major retailers — including Target, CVS, Kohl’s, Walmart, Kroger and Home Depot — to announce last week that shoppers would have to wear face coverings inside U.S. stores. But mask requirements have proven difficult to enforce, and low-paid retail and service workers typically bear the brunt of customers’ anger. There have been countless examples of shoppers becoming belligerent when asked to wear a mask, and some workers have even been physically assaulted.

Earlier this month, some Starbucks employees told The Washington Post that their managers had warned them to avoid confronting maskless customers. Similarly, CVS said last week that it was “not asking our store employees to play the role of enforcer” for its new mask policy.

At least a dozen maskless shoppers walked into a Lowe’s store outside Charlotte in the span of just 10 minutes on Tuesday, the Observer reported. When the paper inquired about the apparent lack of enforcement, a spokesperson said that safety “has been and continues to be” the chain’s priority.

“We will not ask our associates to put their safety at risk by confronting customers about wearing masks, so we are consistently requesting that customers wear masks for the safety of everyone in our stores,” the statement from Lowe’s said.

The novel coronavirus has claimed the lives of 13 nuns — a fifth of the community — who lived together in a convent outside of Detroit.

As the virus spread across the United States in March, church services at the convent that housed the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Felix of Cantalice in Livonia, Mich., began shutting down. First, mass was canceled, then Communion services. The priest was barred from entering the convent. Visitors were banned on March 13. Sisters were confined to their rooms and restricted from enjoying meals together.

Only essential staff and nurses continued to enter the convent as the weeks went on. According to the nonprofit Global Sisters Report, the virus first entered the convent after two unnamed staff members tested positive.

The first sister to pass, 99-year-old Mary Luiza Wawrzyniak, died April 10, on Good Friday. Over the next month, 11 more nuns died of the virus, according to the report. A 13th sister died on June 27, after initially appearing to recover from the virus.

The Felician Sisters congregation had 65 members before the pandemic began.

“We all knew if it hit the place, it would be bad,” Sister Mary Ann Smith told the Global Sisters Report. “But we never anticipated how quickly it would go.”

Many of the women who live in the Michigan convent are elderly, and the 13 women who died of the virus ranged in age from 69 to 99. The number of nuns in the United States has steadily declined in recent decades, falling from more than 179,000 in the 1960s to just under 50,000 by 2014.

Nearly two months after admitting that Sweden’s controversial approach to the coronavirus had led to too many deaths, the country’s top epidemiologist now says the strategy is working.

“The epidemic is now being slowed down, in a way that I think few of us would have believed a week or so ago,” Swedish state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell said at a news conference Tuesday, according to Reuters. That signaled that the Scandinavian nation was approaching widespread immunity, he said.

Tegnell also pointed to a decline in death rates and intensive care unit hospitalizations as proof that “the Swedish strategy is working.”

Sweden’s overall infection rate and death count remain far higher than other Nordic nations, which enacted strict shutdowns at the start of the pandemic and have recently begun lifting some restrictions. By comparison, Sweden took a hands-off approach that allowed restaurants, bars, salons, stores and many schools to remain open.

In early June, Tegnell acknowledged that the country’s death toll was too high and that there was room for improvement. “Should we encounter the same disease, with exactly what we know about it today, I think we would land midway between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world did,” he said.

But he returned to defending the country’s much-debated approach on Tuesday, saying that Sweden had controlled the spread of the virus “with substantially less invasive measures” than many other countries that have recently seen caseloads and hospitalizations decline.

Mae Krier fondly reminisces about her favorite bandanna she wore while toiling away in the Boeing factory where she helped make B-17 and B-29 warplanes as a teenage girl during World War II.

Krier, now 94, often had to retie the burgundy knit bandanna when it slipped off her head during her shift at the Seattle factory. There, she and other young female workers wore the kerchiefs to protect their hair from getting caught in machines and yanked out of their scalps.

For many years, Krier has paid tribute to her beloved Rosie the Riveters by making red bandannas with white polka dots — a style shown in J. Howard Miller’s iconic Rosie the Riveter “We Can Do It!” poster for Westinghouse Electric. Since the war against the novel coronavirus started, Krier shifted her energy from making Rosie bandannas to Rosie face masks, cut from the same cotton cloth.

Miami will dedicate 39 law enforcement officers to enforcing the city’s mask ordinance, Mayor Francis Suarez said Tuesday at a news conference.

Like many other hard-hit South Florida cities, Miami requires face coverings to be worn in both indoor and outdoor public settings, with exceptions only for joggers, people with health conditions and children under 2. As cases and hospitalizations continue to surge, however, the city is taking things a step further by creating a mask enforcement unit.

The 39 officers “are going to be working seven days a week,” Suarez said. “All they are going to be doing is mask enforcement.”

Violators will be fined $50 for a first offense, $100 for a second offense and $500 after that. Anyone who violates the ordinance more than three times will be arrested.

Miami-Dade County leads Florida for the most coronavirus infections reported per 100,000 people, as well as the highest death count, according to data tracked by the Miami Herald.

ROME — European Union leaders on Tuesday provided a vital lifeline for the Mediterranean countries that have sometimes felt abandoned by Brussels amid the coronavirus pandemic, reaching a deal to pump money into their hard-hit economies.

Though the rescue package was celebrated by nearly all the leaders after four days of tense negotiations, the reaction was perhaps most notable in Europe’s south — particularly in Italy, where months ago politicians on the left and the right expressed fury at the disunified European response.

Under the deal struck Tuesday, Italy will receive the largest share of the stimulus money, with Spain receiving the second-largest. Nearly as important as the result were the political dynamics: Though some northern nations wanted a smaller rescue package with tighter conditions, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron pushed back, smoothing over a north-south divide that has plagued previous crises.

Cornell University suspended its long-standing requirement for seniors to complete a swim test before graduation for those students who will earn their degrees by the 2021 spring semester.

The test was first suspended for students in the 2020 spring graduating class when the university stopped administering it in March because of the novel coronavirus pandemic, according to the campus newspaper.

Most students take the test as incoming freshmen during orientation, and those who do not are required to pay a $100 late fee. Those fees will be waived for this year’s incoming students when they take the test later on in their undergraduate careers, the university said on its website.

The swim test dates to 1905, when Col. Frank Barton instituted the graduation requirement after similar tests were put in place at the U.S. Military Academy and the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. Women who attend Cornell University have been required to pass a swim test since 1920.

To pass the test, students must jump into deep water and swim 75 yards continuously, swimming 25 yards on their front, 25 yards on their back and the last 25 yards using the stroke of their choice.

Look around the field these days, and there is probably someone doing something out of the ordinary. Maybe Tres Barrera, one of the Washington Nationals’ extra catchers, is moonlighting as a bullpen catcher. Maybe Octavio Martinez, a bullpen catcher, is moonlighting as a ballboy. Maybe a 53-year-old coach is playing right field.

In baseball, as in many workplaces during the novel coronavirus pandemic, odd jobs are common. Old jobs are more nuanced and complicated. In the three weeks leading into Opening Day, which is scheduled for Thursday at Nationals Park, the whole sport has adjusted to a new normal, a new set of rules and, for many, a new definition of work.

That’s stretched staff, coaches and players thin and led to some wacky sights. And this is only the beginning.

President Trump on Tuesday delivered a grim forecast of soaring cases of the novel coronavirus across the country, acknowledging that “it will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better.”

The statement was a rare admission from Trump that all is not well with the response to the virus by his administration, which has rejected the advice of scientific experts, been reluctant to take responsibility and has issued contradictory and at times divisive public messaging.

As he convened the first White House coronavirus task force briefing in weeks, the president struck a newly somber and pessimistic tone. After months of playing down the virus and the dangers of its resurgence, Trump said his acknowledgment that the situation will worsen is “something I don’t like saying about things, but that’s the way it is. That’s what we have.”