Live updates: Video shows Memorial Day crowd flouting coronavirus restrictions as states reopen

A cluster of people who attended a high school pool party tested positive for the novel coronavirus as Arkansas faces a “second peak” of cases, the state’s governor said Saturday.

“A high school swim party that I’m sure everybody thought was harmless,” Asa Hutchinson (R) said during a briefing. “They’re young, they’re swimming, they’re just having activity, and positive cases resulted from that.”

Hutchinson didn’t specify the number of cases linked to the party, and the state’s health department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post.

He also didn’t say how residents in his state should ensure they don’t spread the virus, but in a morning interview on Fox News Sunday, Hutchinson didn’t stress staying home.

“We have to manage the risk,” he said.” “We take the virus very seriously, it’s a risk, it causes death, but you can’t cloister yourself at home, that is just contrary to the American spirit.”

Hutchinson never issued a statewide stay-home directive, and at a White House meeting with President Trump on Wednesday, the governor emphasized Arkansas is “at work” and businesses are open.

But on Saturday, he warned people celebrating the holiday weekend to “be safe.”

“During this Memorial [Day] weekend, we want to be out and we want to enjoy ourselves, we want to remember this holiday and those that have served our country and given their lives in service of our country,” he continued, “but let’s be safe and let’s be disciplined at the same time.”

Earlier in the week, the state had logged its highest single-day count of new cases: 455. Then, on Saturday, Arkansas added 163 confirmed cases and two deaths. To date, 115 people in the state have died of covid-19, the illness caused by the virus.

“It’s clear and evident to me that we had one peak and then we had a deep dip and then we’re having a second peak right now,” Hutchinson said Saturday.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Sunday shared the New York Times front page memorializing people who died of covid-19, faulting the Trump administration for the rising U.S. death toll.

“Instead of taking fact-based action, Trump blames others for his chaotic failures and erratic response; undermines scientists; and ignores Americans’ hardship,” she wrote. “Our lives are at stake in this election. Vote.”

The political foes have long traded barbs, with Pelosi saying Trump shouldn’t take hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug he has championed as a game-changing treatment for the coronavirus, as protection against the virus because he’s “morbidly obese.”

The president has said Pelosi and other Democrats are exaggerating the scale of the pandemic to score political points.

The Times’s front page on Sunday pays tribute to 1,000 people who died of the disease caused by the coronavirus, as the country’s toll nears 100,000. Other Democratic politicians also shared the front page, including governors of hard-hit states such as California and New Jersey.

“While there are no words we can offer equal to the magnitude of this loss, let us come together to honor their lives by ensuring no one else needlessly dies from this virus,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy tweeted.

While Pelosi named Trump explicitly, other Democrats were less direct, suggesting only that the deaths were a consequence of a lack of leadership.

The United States could move as soon as today to restrict entry from Brazil, a country with a rapidly rising number of coronavirus cases and deaths, White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien said Sunday.

“I think that we’ll have a 212(f) decision today with respect to Brazil and just like we did with the U.K. and — and Europe and China,” O’Brien said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” with Margaret Brennan. “And we hope that’ll be temporary. But because of the situation in Brazil, we’re going to take every step necessary to protect the American people.”

212(f) refers to a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that President Trump used in March to temporarily suspend travel from some countries in Europe because of the coronavirus pandemic

Trump economic adviser Kevin Hassett said the White House may support some aid for state and local governments in an additional coronavirus relief bill being considered in Congress. But he accused House Democrats of pushing for aid that far outstrips the money that state and local governments actually need.

“I don’t think there’s ever going to be an analysis that supports the massive figures coming out of the House,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Hassert also warned the United States might still be looking at double-digit unemployment in November. But, he said, “I think that all the signs of economic recovery are going to be raging everywhere. And the only thing we’re going to really be debating, as economists, is, are we going to get back to where we were, or is it going to be kind of a long haul to get there?”

In the interview, Hassett also said he has consulted his doctor about taking hydroxychloroquine but was told the drug would interact badly with other medicines he takes. President Trump has said he’s taking the drug to protect against the coronavirus despite studies showing it may be unsafe.

“I think there’s a lot of evidence in the lab this could work,” Hassett said.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) defended the president’s call for churches and other houses of worship to open during the Memorial Day holiday, saying he believes people will attend safely.

“I trust the American public. I think they’re going to make the right decision,” he said Sunday morning on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Scott declined to say whether President Trump could or should override governors who keep churches closed, saying he believes the Bill of Rights guarantees people the right to attend services.

“Do I believe the government can tell us not to worship? I don’t believe they can,” he said.

But New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) pushed back against the president’s urging to open houses of worship during the Memorial Day weekend, saying it’s not yet safe in his state for more than 25 people to gather indoors.

“We’ll get there on houses of worship,” he said.

Murphy also urged more federal aid for state and local governments. New Jersey may have to lay off state employees, including teachers, firefighters and health-care workers, if the state doesn’t get significant aid, he said, the result of billions of dollars in lost income due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Large crowds of vacationers flocked to the Lake of the Ozarks over the holiday weekend, flouting social distancing guidelines as they packed into yacht clubs, outdoor bars and resort pools in the Missouri tourist hot spot.

Images of the revelry rippled across social media, showing people eating, drinking and swimming in close quarters. In one picture shared by the news station KSDK, dozens of people could be seen crammed on an outdoor patio underneath a sign reading, “Please practice social distancing.”

The scenes underscored how some have interpreted the loosening of coronavirus restrictions ahead of the Memorial Day holiday as an invitation to return to a pre-pandemic version of normal. Amid varied and sometimes conflicting orders from state and local officials, people across the country have been left to decide on their own how strictly to follow the rules.

The images elicited a barrage of criticism from people angered by the open disregard for the guidelines that public health experts have spent months promoting.

“I don’t even know what to say anymore,” tweeted “The View” co-host Meghan McCain.

Like most of the country, Missouri has allowed some businesses to reopen and rolled back pandemic-related bans on nonessential activities, even as researchers warn that the virus is still spreading at epidemic rates in Missouri and 23 other states.

After Missouri’s stay-at-home order expired May 3, Gov. Mike Parson (R) said all businesses, including large venues, can open as long as seating is spaced out to enforce social distancing, meaning people must be able to remain six feet apart.

Many businesses around the Lake of the Ozarks closed in the spring when the pandemic hit. But as the state moved to reopen, they allowed guests to rebook rooms. Several hotels and resorts told local media last week that they were fully booked.

In videos shared widely on social media, people could be seen lined up outside the Backwater Jack’s bar and grill, waiting to enter the already packed venue.

“Corona-free,” one man in line shouted in as the camera panned to him.

The business did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.

Tenants nationwide are facing the possibility of getting kicked out of their homes as officials lift bans on evictions intended to protect renters amid the mounting economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

Even with tens of millions of people out of work and the United States recording job losses not seen since the Great Depression, major metropolitan areas are allowing eviction restrictions to expire, threatening tenants who have been unable to pay rent because of reduced income or job loss on account of the public health emergency.

In Houston, eviction hearings resumed last week after the Texas Supreme Court lifted the state’s moratorium, as Houston Public Media reported. Renters could start getting forced out of their homes and businesses as early as May 26.

Evictions are also looming over renters in Kansas City, Mo., where proceedings are set to resume at the beginning of June. Tenants are rallying to persuade officials to extend protections that were put in place along with the city’s stay-at-home order.

“After this pandemic hit, both of my main jobs ended. And to be honest, I’m quite scared,” Ashley Johnson of the organization KC Tenants told KMBC last week. “I’m scared for my children and I.”

In Florida, the Tampa Bay Times reported hundreds of eviction cases are awaiting action in Florida courts, having piled up during Gov. Ron DeSantis’s stay. It’s unclear what will happen to the pending cases when the order expires June 2.

Further complicating the process for renters and homeowners is the patchwork of policies that differ from county to county and state to state and include the eviction moratorium granted under the Cares Act, which prevents evictions of tenants in federal rental housing or those with federally backed mortgages for missing payments.

The director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a lab in the Chinese city where many of the first cases of the novel coronavirus were detected, said allegations that the virus leaked from her facility were “pure fabrication.”

In an interview with Chinese state broadcaster CGTN, Wang Yanyi said her laboratory did not have a sample of the virus, known technically as SARS-CoV-2, until Dec. 30 — after the outbreak had begun.

“We didn’t have any knowledge before that, nor had we ever encountered, researched or kept the virus,” Wang said. “In fact, like everyone else, we didn’t even know the virus existed. How could it have leaked from our lab when we never had it?”

The Wuhan Institute of Virology and another lab in the same city operated by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention have become the focal point of theories that a virus could have accidentally leaked out of a lab during scientific research.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last month there was “enormous evidence” the Chinese government had covered up a leak at a lab, but he did not offer any publicly. Key U.S. allies such as Australia have balked at the theory, and Pompeo subsequently amended his language.

In her interview with CGTN, Wang acknowledged a colleague named Shi Zhengli had been studying bat coronaviruses in an attempt to understand a separate SARs outbreak in 2003, but she said these viruses were not genetically similar to SARS-CoV-2.

“Professor Shi and her team have isolated and obtained some coronaviruses from bats. Now we have three strains of live viruses,” Wang said. “One of them has the highest similarity, 96 percent, to the SARS virus. But their highest similarity to SARS-CoV-2 reaches only 79.8 percent.”

Wang said scientists around the world agreed the virus most probably came from a wild animal but they do not know exactly how that happened and whether it could happen again. “This is why the cooperation between scientists all over the world is needed to find the answers,” she said.

New York may have the Empire State Building, lit up in festive hues to mark holidays big and small, but in Washington’s Petworth neighborhood, residents look to the front lawn of a blue rowhouse to celebrate the passage of time.

Hardly a holiday goes uncelebrated. Even the small ones.

So when the District announced its stay-at-home order, meant to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, it was no surprise to neighbors that homeowners Curtis Gilbert and Chris Rowland transformed their Easter Bunny display into a flashy pandemic warning sign.

BRUSSELS — The French government has asked Air France for a “drastic reduction” in its domestic flights in exchange for a bailout, Ecological Transition Minister Élisabeth Borne said Sunday, as European countries attempt to use the pandemic-fueled economic crisis to further ambitious climate goals.

French leaders asked Air France to stop servicing routes that France’s high-speed rail network can cover in less than 2½ hours, Borne told France Inter radio, part of a goal to cut the carrier’s carbon emissions from domestic flights in half by 2024.

Air France and KLM, which operate jointly, have received about $7.3 billion in loan guarantees from the state to mitigate the disruptions caused by the pandemic, which has brought air travel to a near standstill in Europe. Even before the coronavirus struck Europe, airlines were coming under pressure to reduce their emissions, a major contributor to global warming.

President Emmanuel Macron is expected on Tuesday to outline a plan to rescue French car manufacturers that would place a heavy emphasis on green goals, France’s Le Parisien newspaper reported Saturday. The state would offer buyers a rebate of up to 8,000 euros, or $8,720, for the purchase of fully electric cars and a bit less for hybrids.

The European Commission on Wednesday will announce recovery proposals for the 27-nation European Union, for which leaders are also expected to prioritize green goals as they reboot economic growth.

Of all of the times that White House coronavirus task force member Deborah Birx has said things clearly intended for President Trump’s benefit, few were as transparent as her comments on Friday afternoon. She was walking through the improvements in the rate of spread of the coronavirus, drawing attention to regions still at risk.

“I’m going to call your attention to the top three states, the top three states with the largest percent,” she said — “and this is so you can all make your decisions about going outside, and social distancing, potentially playing golf if you’re very careful and you don’t touch the flags and all of those issues.”

Got that? You can play golf if you’d like. It’s okay to go play golf. Want to play golf? Go for it. All clear.

And lo, a report from the White House press pool on Saturday morning: “President Trump is returning to the golf course on this pleasant, sunny Saturday,” it read.

Infections spreading among health-care workers. Nursing home staffers fleeing outbreaks. Public health officials stationed at the airport to screen arriving visitors.

Quebec, which borders New York and three other U.S. states, is the Canadian province hit hardest by the coronavirus. Home to roughly 22 percent of the country’s population, it has suffered more than 60 percent of its deaths.

It’s also the province moving most aggressively to reopen.

Legend has it that, during his presidency, Richard Nixon passed along an idea for a play to George Allen, then coach of the Washington Redskins.

Now you don’t have to be the leader of the free world, or even an elected official, to have a say in calling plays in an NFL game.

The United States should abandon its “wishful thinking about changing China” and stop pushing the two countries “to the brink of a new Cold War,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Sunday, trying to position Beijing as the grown-up in an increasingly fractious bilateral relationship.

With tensions between the world’s two largest economies mounting by the day, Wang used the opportunity of a news conference during the annual piece of political theater known as the National People’s Congress to send a direct message to Washington.

This year, the conflict has taken on a new dimension, with the emergence of the novel coronavirus in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Reeling from more than 96,000 deaths in the United States, the Trump administration is trying to heap the blame for the pandemic entirely on China’s ruling Communist Party.

This was supposed to be the week Roman Baca finally brought his life’s work back home.

The former Marine Corps reservist trained as a ballet dancer before he shouldered a machine gun in the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2005. He later merged his two worlds, creating a company that paints the experiences of war and trauma through dance. Memorial Day was going to be the moment he brought that vision to his hometown of Albuquerque.

But the coronavirus pandemic has transformed nearly every facet of daily life, including Memorial Day events, as social distancing, closures and restrictions disrupt the rituals of grief for those who have died in uniform.

Flush with record amounts of cash and a massive organization, President Trump and his allies had planned to spend the spring unleashing a torrent of withering attacks against Joe Biden in an attempt to define him in the eyes of voters before the former vice president could do so himself.

But the coronavirus pandemic upended those plans — delaying the campaign’s blitz of paid negative television ads until earlier this month, and forcing a reckoning over what kind of campaign can be effective during a time of historic unemployment and mass death.

Trump’s moves in recent days make clear the president has decided to revive the disruptive themes of his 2016 bid, aimed at branding his opponent as a corrupt member of the Washington establishment and himself as an insurgent problem-solver. It’s a message that often has seemed incongruent with the present reality.

BRUSSELS — The first signs of the effectiveness of vaccines against the coronavirus will likely be seen only in the fall, and it could take a long time before a vaccine is broadly available, the head of a Geneva-based vaccine alliance said in an interview published Sunday, despite President Trump’s promises to have one ready by the end of the year.

“Unfortunately, we really don’t know which vaccine will work, and if there will be one at all. If we’re lucky, we’ll have a hint of effectiveness in the fall,” Seth Berkley, head of the Gavi vaccine alliance, told Zurich’s NZZ am Sonntag newspaper. “There is still a long way to go before an approved active ingredient is available in large quantities for the global population.”

In response to a question about the United States having sat out a European-led effort to pledge money toward developing a vaccine, Berkley urged as much global cooperation as possible in the race to produce a counter to the coronavirus, warning that individual countries’ efforts to prioritize their own citizens are likely to fail.

“If all politicians only look out for their country, then even countries with vaccines have a problem, because the virus will continue to rage in the rest of the world and no trade or exchange will be possible,” he said. He also said that it was possible that some countries’ efforts to develop a vaccine will fail and others will succeed, deepening the self-interested argument in favor of collaborating.

Trump has pushed an ambitious timeline to have a vaccine available — one that outstrips what his own scientific advisers say is likely or possible.

As California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) considers whether to ease restrictions on in-person religious gatherings, new clusters of coronavirus cases have emerged in northern California that appear connected to church services.

Health officials in Mendocino County confirmed over the weekend that the county’s six newest infections were linked to the Redwood Valley Assembly of God, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The county reported last week that the church’s pastor and two other people were infected after they participated in a live-streamed Mother’s Day service that featured singing.

“When we have an outbreak of such a large magnitude, it’s very concerning because we know that these individuals have had other contacts since contracting the disease,” County Health Officer Noemi Doohan said in a video update Friday. “We now have to do the very time consuming and difficult work of the case investigation contact tracing.”

In Butte County, at least two people have fallen ill with covid-19 after attending a Mother’s Day service held by a local church in violation of the state’s prohibitions on large gatherings, as the Chico Enterprise-Record reported last week. County health officials have told the more than 180 people who attended the service to self-quarantine.

“At this time, organizations that hold in-person services or gatherings are putting the health and safety of their congregations, the general public and our local ability to open up at great risk,” County Health Director Danette York said in a statement.

Facing mounting pressure from religious groups to loosen restrictions on churches, Newsom said last week he would issue new guidance on in-person worship by Monday. President Trump has called on the nation’s governors to allow churches to open amid the pandemic, threatening to take unspecified action against them if they refuse.

Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, one of the holiest sites in Christianity, reopened on Sunday, months after it closed for the first time since the 14th century, allowing a trickle of pilgrims into its winding halls under strict rules of social distancing.

The church, its crowded spaces typically crammed with thousands visitors from around the world, will now allow in 50 people at a time. They will have to wear masks and keep six feet from each other, according to the leaders of the three religious communities who together are the custodians of the site.

“From this Holy Place, in this Easter time, we continue our prayers, asking for the end of this pandemic,” the leaders of the Greek Orthodox, Catholic and Armenian Orthodox churches in Jerusalem said in a statement on Saturday. The churches share custody of the site.

They will take measures to “avoid the risk of a new spread of the COVID-19 infection,” they said, including asking worshipers not to touch or kiss the icons and stones with religious significance inside the church.

The basilica — built on the site where Christians believe Jesus was crucified, and also incorporating what is said to be his tomb — had been closed since March 25, ahead of the Easter holidays, to reduce the spread of the coronavirus in Israel. The keeper of the keys to the church said it was the first time it had been closed at length since the Black Death plague in 1349.

More than 16,700 coronavirus cases have been reported in Israel, with 279 deaths. Palestinian authorities have reported 368 cases in the occupied West Bank and two deaths.

Other religious sites in Jerusalem are slowly reopening as Israel loosens its lockdown measures, including the Western Wall, which is allowing a limited number of Jewish worshipers. Palestinian authorities have sought to impose a lockdown during this weekend’s Eid al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of Ramadan to try to limit the spread of the virus.

The coronavirus pandemic is rapidly transforming this year’s elections, changing the way tens of millions of people cast ballots and putting thousands of election officials at the center of a pitched political fight as they rush to adapt with limited time and funding.

In a watershed moment for American voting, nearly 30 states have changed rules or practices for this year’s primaries or the general election in response to the public health threat posed by covid-19, according to a tally by The Washington Post. The new policies affect roughly 86.6 million registered voters — including more than 40 million people who now have the temporary right to cast an absentee ballot because of the virus.

An outbreak of covid-19 at a Vancouver food processing plant led Washington state to halt a county’s progression through the phases of reopening, underscoring the difficulties communities face in keeping infections down on their way back toward normalcy.

Clark County, in the southwest corner of the state, had put in a request to move to Phase 2 of the state’s reopening plan, which allows outdoor activities involving five or fewer people and lets restaurants, hair salons and nail salons operate at 50 percent capacity or less, among other changes.

Then Clark County Public Health reported that 38 employees of Firestone Pacific Foods in Vancouver tested positive for the coronavirus. At least two were Clark County residents, officials said, and one person was hospitalized.

Firestone was ordered to stop production on Tuesday in an effort to halt the virus’s spread. Testing of all employees began Friday, after 12 staffers had already tested positive, health officials said. Public Health is expected to update the infection numbers Tuesday.

Clark County will remain under Phase 1 restrictions until further notice. More than half of Washington state’s counties have now been approved to move to Phase 2, according to the Tacoma News Tribune.

“Public Health has gone above and beyond in its response to this outbreak,” said Clark County council chair Eileen Quiring in a statement on the county’s website. “As our community moves forward, whether next week or in the weeks that follow, we may unfortunately see more positive cases. Public Health’s efforts during this outbreak show they have the ability to effectively respond to outbreaks in order to keep our community healthy.”