Live updates: Emergency unemployment payments likely to end; U.S. records 1,400 coronavirus deaths in a day

With his controversial, hands-off approach to the coronavirus, Swedish state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell had already fashioned himself as a global outlier on responding to the pandemic. To avoid an economic shutdown, he avoided strict social distancing requirements and allowed daily life to move along.

As infections now appear to be dropping in Sweden, Tegnell has become an outlier on another key tool meant to curb the virus: face coverings.

“We see no point in wearing a face mask in Sweden,” he said at a news conference Tuesday, according to Bloomberg News. “Not even on public transport.”

Face masks are not required in most Nordic countries, where officials say they are an unnecessary precaution given the limited risk of infection.

Yet Tegnell’s comments nonetheless put him at odds against most of the world’s leading public health officials, who have advocated for people to cover their faces in public. On Tuesday, Mike Catchpole, the Sweden-based chief scientist at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, said masks do play a role in containing the virus.

For months, critics have questioned Tegnell’s light-touch approach in Sweden. He insisted that protecting only the elderly and other vulnerable populations would make the country more resilient during a second wave of infections.

That approach gave Swedes a coronavirus mortality rate that exceeded its Nordic neighbors and even hard-hit Brazil and the United States. In early June, Tegnell admitted that his strategy may have prompted too many deaths.

Yet since cases hit a peak later that month, the infection rate has dropped off, Bloomberg News reported, even as testing has increased.

As Tegnell again defended his strategy, he pointed out that “worrying” second waves were beginning to emerge in many countries that had appeared to have brought the pandemic under control, such as Spain and Belgium.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has directed that, starting Thursday morning, all House members and staff on her side of the Capitol complex must wear face coverings, with very limited exceptions, and will be asked to leave if they don’t.

The directive, distributed late Wednesday by the House sergeant at arms and attending physician, expands on a requirement announced earlier in the day by Pelosi that members must wear masks while appearing on the House floor.

The moves were spurred by the news that Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.), a lawmaker who has spurned facial coverings, had tested positive for the coronavirus.

The Wednesday night directive lists only a few exceptions, such as when one is eating or drinking or granting an interview, provided that the member is six feet away from the person conducting the interview.

“Any person not wearing a face cover will be asked to put on a face cover or leave the building,” the directive says. “All Members and staff are expected to adhere to this requirement as a sign of respect for the health, safety, and well-being of others present in the Chamber and surrounding areas.”

Gohmert revealed Wednesday that he tested positive for the coronavirus shortly before he was expected to travel on Air Force One with President Trump to his home state. Gohmert has been part of a contingent of a couple dozen House Republicans who often do not wear masks around the Capitol.

Pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson launched human testing of its coronavirus vaccine candidate in the United States this week and in Europe last week. If all goes well, the company plans two large, late-stage trials — one that will test its candidate vaccine as a single shot in at least 30,000 people, and another with a booster shot. The first trial could begin in September.

“They will run in parallel. We’re going to evaluate both, to make sure we don’t leave any stone unturned and get to the best possible protection,” said Paul Stoffels, chief scientific officer.

An encouraging study published in the journal Nature on Thursday showed the company’s vaccine candidate appeared to protect monkeys against infection with a single shot. After being vaccinated and exposed to the virus, no monkeys had detectable virus in their lungs, and a single monkey out of six had virus in its nasal passages.

Other vaccine technologies currently in the last stages of human testing in the U.S. require two doses to be given weeks apart.

“A single shot vaccine would have substantial practical and logistical advantages for global deployment and global pandemic control,” said Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “Imagine if you can go to the pharmacy and get one shot and you’re done.”

Buddy the German shepherd, who was adored by his owners and the family’s other dog, died earlier this month at age 7, after first showing symptoms of the coronavirus in mid-April. His owner had tested positive for the infection.

In an interview with National Geographic, the Mahoney family shared their pain, describing their 130-pound dog as like a son who “brought joy to everybody.” Together they shared cuddles, laughter and a trove of treasured memories.

On June 2, six weeks after Buddy began displaying signs he was unwell, such as struggling to breathe and nasal mucus, the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed he was the first dog in the United States to test positive. It was likely that Buddy had contracted the virus from his owner, who tested positive at Easter, the department said.

The initial report noted that Buddy, who had not been identified at the time, was expected to make a full recovery.

Buddy lived with his family in Staten Island. His owners later learned that he probably also had lymphoma, a cancer that may have contributed to the symptoms he was displaying in the weeks before his death on July 11, or perhaps even made him more vulnerable to covid-19.

But little is known about how the virus affects animals, and vets were puzzled by Buddy’s case. It remains unclear how much of a role the coronavirus played in his death.

The family’s other dog, Duke, tested negative for the virus, but samples showed he had antibodies in his system — a sign he was also previously infected.

According to the Mahoneys, Duke hasn’t been the same since his big brother died and is often found resting in Buddy’s old napping spots.

Some of the death certificates churned out by the San Juan de Dios Hospital in Guatemala City in recent months have little more than guesses written on them. The ages are an estimate. The names are listed as “XX.”

By the time the bodies are buried in a shady corner of a municipal cemetery, only the cause of death has been filled out accurately: covid-19.

In some of the largest public hospitals in the Central American city of 1 million, this is what the coronavirus pandemic has wrought: Nameless corpses unclaimed for so long that doctors are forced to bury them before they can be identified.

Since a young woman in her 20s was buried in April, more than 60 people at San Juan de Dios have suffered such a fate, hospital officials told the Associated Press. So far, no one has come forward seeking any of the corpses.

But that has not stopped the workers from attempting to identify them anyway, even under government policies that require speedy burials. Due to the pandemic, families are allowed to claim bodies only up to six hours after a patient’s death.

When sick people arrive at the hospital alone, too ill to offer personal details, hospital staff photograph the patients’ faces. If they die, their corpses are placed in body bags with transparent strips over their faces.

Similar efforts are being made at Roosevelt Hospital, another large facility in Guatemala City. Luis Chávez, the head of pathology, told the AP that staff started placing bodies in a refrigerated trailer as a workaround.

In one case, Chávez told the AP, hospital workers broke protocol and left a body in the morgue for two days, the female victim known only as “XX.” Family members arrived at the facility in time and were able to identify her from a photograph taken through the clear part of her body bag.

Most everyone else, however, is buried in a shady part of the capital’s La Verbena Cemetery. Their unadorned graves can be distinguished by only a number.

New Zealand — which stamped out the coronavirus so successfully that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was spotted shaking hands with a farmers market vendor over the weekend, and September’s parliamentary elections now dominate the headlines — is looking awfully appealing these days.

Last month, Immigration New Zealand’s website received the equivalent of one hit from the United States every 30 seconds, the New Zealand Herald reported Thursday, citing government data. More than a quarter-million Americans have investigated whether they qualify for New Zealand citizenship since the pandemic hit nationwide, with interest starting to surge in April. At that point, New Zealand was not yet virus-free, but it had become clear that the country’s strict lockdown was putting it on a dramatically different trajectory than the United States and much of the world.

But interest in moving to New Zealand really skyrocketed in June, as the United States witnessed an explosion of new coronavirus infections. Right around that time, New Zealand reduced its count of active cases to zero and lifted virtually all coronavirus-related restrictions. Visits to Immigration New Zealand’s website from U.S. users went up 160 percent that month, compared to the same period last year, the Herald reported. Meanwhile, Google searches for “move to New Zealand” reached heights last seen when President Trump was elected in 2016.

Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist who had been based in California, told the Herald that she accepted a job in Wellington and moved to New Zealand this month because she grew so frustrated and frightened by the United States’ failure to contain the virus. But for most Americans, that isn’t an option, since New Zealand’s borders remain closed to foreigners, and getting a visa poses a challenge.

LONDON ­— Medical officials in Britain announced Thursday that the isolation period required for those suffering with symptoms of the coronavirus would be extended from one week to 10 days.

The change in health and safety guidance was declared after Health Secretary Matt Hancock expressed concern about the threat of a possible second wave of the coronavirus and said the government would be taking protective steps to “tackle” transmission of the infection and keep the country safe.

Several European countries that appeared to have flattened the curve, including Spain, Belgium and Germany, have reported a spike in cases in recent weeks — triggering widespread concern among those who were just beginning to settle back into their normal lives after months of lockdown restrictions.

Speaking to Sky News, Hancock admitted he was “worried” about another outbreak. “You can see a second wave starting to roll across Europe, and we’ve got to do everything we can to prevent it from reaching these shores, and to tackle it,” he said.

With more than 46,000 deaths, Britain is the worst-hit country in Europe. Italy and France were also hit particularly hard by the pandemic and have been working to rebuild and reopen.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson also pointed to the resurgence in Europe and said risks were “starting to bubble up again,” as he defended the government’s decision to impose a 14-day quarantine period on Britons returning from mainland Spain and the Balearic and Canary islands.

President Trump restarted coronavirus briefings from the White House last week in an attempt to show Americans that he is in control of a pandemic that feels anything but under control.

But he’s also back to promoting blatant falsehoods and conspiracy theories about the virus. In his briefing Tuesday, he …

Incorrectly said the country’s coronavirus outbreak was in just a few states and nowhere else. “We’re seeing improvements across the major metro areas and most hot spots. You can look at large portions of our country. It’s corona-free,” he said. That’s just not true. According to cases and deaths tracked daily by The Washington Post, most states have seen increases in cases this past week.

Arizona will require nearly 13,000 children in foster care to attend in-person classes when schools reopen, the Arizona Republic reported on Wednesday.

Exactly when that might happen is unclear. Gov. Doug Ducey (R) announced last week that school districts will have wide latitude to determine whether they want to bring students back to classrooms, or move to a virtual model. Most will make a decision in the coming weeks, and foster children will take classes online if that’s the only option offered by their school. But if schools do reopen, foster parents can’t opt to keep their children home.

That decision has been controversial, the Republic reported. Officials with the Arizona Department of Child Safety say children are seeking a sense of normalcy, while some child-welfare advocates note that classroom routines can be an important constant in foster children’s lives. Teachers also play a crucial role in detecting any signs of neglect or abuse, something that’s harder to do over the Internet.

But a number of parents have concerns about whether it’s safe to send children back to school in the midst of one of the nation’s worst coronavirus outbreaks. Some foster families told the Republic that they want to keep their biological children home, and are uncomfortable with the idea that they’d have to treat their foster ones differently.

“It sends a message to the foster children that they are different and perhaps sacrificial, when a biological or adopted kid gets to stay home and they have to go to school,” Suzanne Cordiero, a foster parent, told the paper.

The Department of Child Safety says it’s considering making exceptions for some foster children, particularly those with underlying medical conditions, according to the Republic.

When the coronavirus reached Guayaquil, Ecuador, in the spring, the outbreak spread so fast that mortuary workers could not keep up with mounting deaths. Corpses were left rotting on sidewalks and inside homes for days, underscoring just how badly the city had been ravaged.

Cases have since leveled off, but many worry the nightmare situation could soon replicate 250 miles northeast — in Quito, the South American country’s mountainous capital, where hospitals are filling up and funerals are scrambling to meet demand.

Since June 30, infections in the city of nearly 2 million have doubled to more than 12,700, and fatalities have climbed, too, the Associated Press reported. About one-third of the metropolis’s 605 deaths were reported this month alone.

As authorities have tried to revive the economy with loosened restrictions, the seasonal flu has made things worse. In chilly Andean winter temperatures, hundreds of people with breathing difficulty have lined up outside testing sites, according to the AP, while overwhelmed hospitals have added tents to handle a ballooning number of patients.

“The public is very afraid of the slightest respiratory symptom,” Marco de la Torre, an ear, nose and throat doctor at Quito’s Central University, told the news agency. “Queries have exploded for fear of covid-19, although many have the common flu. ”

With more than 83,000 confirmed infections throughout Ecuador, officials maintain that the outbreak has not reached the dire state of neighboring Brazil or Peru. But the picture is not rosy, either. About 5,600 people in Ecuador have died of covid-19, in addition to another 3,350 fatalities with possible links to the virus.

María Paula Romo, the country’s government minister, said that while most have been following social distancing rules, tightly packed markets, informal soccer matches and covert parties have all prompted outbreaks.

Despite having the world’s second-worst coronavirus outbreak, Brazil is opening back up to foreign travelers.

President Jair Bolsonaro’s government abruptly allowed international flights to resume on Wednesday, lifting restrictions on air travel that have been in place since late March. Under the new regulations, tourists from any country can visit Brazil as long as they have health insurance, according to Reuters. They also have to come by plane, since travel bans remain in place for people arriving by land or sea.

While officials didn’t explain the reason for the change, the easing of restrictions comes as Brazil’s tourism industry faces staggering losses and the country plunges deeper into recession. It also comes as Brazil continues to report record numbers of infections and deaths. The country has recorded more than 90,000 fatalities and 2,550,000 coronavirus cases to date, surpassing every nation besides the United States.

Brazil on Wednesday reported 69,074 new cases and 1,595 new fatalities, though health officials said both tallies were artificially high because of a computer error that previously left out some infections and deaths in the state of São Paolo. Still, Agence France-Presse reported, both the number of deaths and the number of new cases have been alarmingly high for the past few weeks. Since June, Brazil has reported more than 30,000 new cases a day. The daily death toll has regularly topped 1,000 since the start of July.

Bolsonaro, who tested positive for the coronavirus earlier this month, has repeatedly dismissed the seriousness of the pandemic and criticized states that impose lockdown measures.

Since late March, President Trump has routinely downplayed the severity of the coronavirus pandemic while simultaneously touting his response to it, claiming to have saved “millions” of lives in the process.

“By closing up, we saved millions — potentially millions of lives … it could be 2 to 3 million lives,” Trump said earlier this month. “… We would’ve had millions of people dead from this curse that came at us.”

Trump, in his telling, has saved anywhere from “tens of thousands” to 4 million lives. Since May, Trump has claimed he saved “millions” of lives nearly three dozen times. You can watch Trump repeatedly defend his response to the pandemic by pointing to this metric in the video above.

Nearly a dozen bar owners in Louisiana sued top state officials over their coronavirus policies Wednesday, arguing that a rule banning on-site consumption at their businesses unfairly singles out their industry.

Much like a similar lawsuit in Texas earlier this month, the suit against Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) argues that their businesses are no more dangerous than other public spaces.

With customers practicing social distancing and physical changes being made to protect from infection, policies that once “may have warranted the benefit of the doubt” are now an infringement on civil liberties, according to the lawsuit.

“Although perhaps justified months ago, it is no longer sufficient to rely on hysteria, hearsay or biased commentary as a basis to impose overly-broad, draconian restrictions on fundamental rights,” said the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.

In June, Edwards allowed all bars and restaurants to open at limited capacity and with all employees wearing masks. But as cases shot back up this month, he restricted bars to only takeout and delivery. Close-knit huddles of people, he said, pose an elevated risk of spreading infections.

According to Louisiana health officials, more than 450 of the state’s confirmed infections have been traced to bars — the largest number of cases for any single type of business aside from food processing. The bar owners, however, say these outbreaks amount to less than 0.5 percent of all reported infections across the state.

Edwards defended his bar restrictions, pointing out that hospitals are dangerously close to full in the Acadiana region, home to all the plaintiffs.

“The governor did what is necessary to reduce the spread and make sure our health care system is not overrun,” a spokeswoman for Edwards said in a statement to the Associated Press.

Victoria, the epicenter of Australia’s coronavirus outbreak, reported record numbers of both coronavirus cases and fatalities on Thursday.

The state confirmed 723 new cases and 13 coronavirus-related deaths in the past 24 hours, making it Australia’s deadliest day yet, Premier Daniel Andrews said. He announced plans to expand Melbourne’s mask mandate statewide and add restrictions for certain parts of the state where infection numbers remain low. Residents of those communities will be banned from having guests in their homes, though restaurants, gyms and pubs will remain open.

While that might sound illogical, Andrews said, “that’s where the transmission is. It’s not in cafes and restaurants, but it is, in small numbers, in people’s homes.”

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison expressed support for the new restrictions on Thursday, telling reporters that “we are not getting the results we would hope for” after several weeks of lockdown in Melbourne.

Though mainly concentrated in Victoria, the resurgence in coronavirus infections has spread to other parts of the country where the virus was thought to be under control. Queensland authorities announced Thursday that they would pursue criminal charges against two teenagers who attended an illegal party in Victoria earlier this month, then tested positive for the coronavirus after returning to Brisbane. The two 19-year-olds allegedly lied about where they had been and went to “extraordinary lengths” to deceive border authorities, Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll said Thursday.

Australia has reported 189 coronavirus-related fatalities to date. The island nation had largely contained the spread of the coronavirus and was taking steps toward reopening when Victoria’s outbreak exploded in June, fueled by breaches at quarantine hotels.