Live updates: More than two dozen states report coronavirus surges as Trump administration prepares for possible second wave

New Zealand director general of health, Ashley Bloomfield, announced two new coronavirus cases Monday morning, bringing the total number of active infections nationwide to nine, after virtually eliminating the virus in May.

A teenage girl who had traveled with her family from Islamabad, with a stop in Melbourne, arrived in Auckland on June 13. She had a runny nose, but no other symptoms. Her family members tested negative for the virus. The other passengers on the flight from Melbourne have been placed in isolation until they test negative for the virus, Bloomfield said.

The second person to test positive was a man in his 30s arrived in New Zealand after traveling from India. One other person who arrived on the same Air India flight had also tested positive on Sunday, Bloomfield said.

New Zealand’s strict lockdown stamped out its coronavirus outbreak in just 49 days. But as the nation has reopened its borders to a small number of travelers, a few new cases have been recorded. The nation is using aggressive testing and mandated isolation of new arrivals to prevent the virus from spreading.

The two newest coronavirus patients tested positive while isolating after arriving in New Zealand. They have been moved to a hotel to quarantine until they clear the virus, Bloomfield said.

On June 16, New Zealand recorded the first two new cases after eliminating the virus within its borders, when two women traveling from Britain tested positive.

The Trump administration is stockpiling supplies in case of a second wave of infections this fall, as the novel coronavirus continues to spread in across the United States, a White House adviser said on Sunday.

“You prepare for what can possibly happen — I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but of course you prepare,” White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said on CNN.

Health experts, including Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have said the United States is still enduring the first wave of its coronavirus outbreak. The number of coronavirus cases would have to decrease significantly for an extended period before the first wave can be considered over, Fauci said last week.

But many states have been seeing increases, rather than declines, in their seven-day average of reported new case numbers.

Twenty-nine states and U.S. territories reported a higher seven-day average on Sunday than they did on June 14. California, Missouri and Oklahoma reported record-high numbers of new cases, according to data tracked by The Washington Post. Many large states that lifted shutdown restrictions in recent weeks, including California, Texas and Florida, have also seen increases in daily case totals.

The increasing coronavirus numbers have led to contentious political spats in recent days. At his Tulsa campaign rally, President Trump said he had asked officials to “slow the testing down” to lower the numbers. White House officials later defended the remark as a joke, but Democrats condemned it.

Nobody wants to know about what I do. People might pay us lip service and say we’re heroes, but our stories aren’t the kind anyone actually wants to hear about. Kids in this country grow up with toy firetrucks, or maybe playing cops and robbers, but who dreams of becoming a paramedic? That’s ambulances. That’s death and vulnerability — the scary stuff. We’re taught in this culture to shun illness like it’s something shameful. We’d rather pretend everything’s fine. We look the other way.

That’s what’s happening now in New York. We just had 20,000-some people die in this city, and already the crowds are lining back up outside restaurants and jamming into bars. This virus is still out there. We respond to 911 calls for covid every day. I’ve been on the scene at more than 200 of these deaths — trying to revive people, consoling their families — but you can’t even be bothered to stay six feet apart and wear a mask, because why? You’re a tough guy? It makes you look weak? You’d rather ignore the whole thing and pretend you’re invincible?

What is it about the eyes that have prompted the repeated coronavirus warnings?

Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned again and again. Wear a face mask, which may be effective because they remind you not to touch your face and eyes, among other things. Or use face shields, if you are a health-care worker.

“If someone sneezes in your face or if you touch a contaminated surface and then rub your eye,” says Jessica Belser, a microbiologist at the CDC, you risk getting the novel coronavirus in your eyes.

You want to protect your eyes from respiratory viruses for two main reasons. There is a direct connection between the eyes and the nasal passages, which can lead to respiratory infection. And viruses can infect the eyes themselves, which is called conjunctivitis — or pinkeye.

President Trump’s Saturday night remark that he asked officials to “slow the [coronavirus] testing down” sparked harsh rebukes from experts and frustration from his own staffers, who say it undercuts their efforts to reassure Americans as the disease surges around the country.

The president’s comment, which came on the same day that eight states reported their highest-ever single-day case counts, drew a chorus of criticism from congressional Democrats and public health officials, who worry the president is more concerned with saving face than combating the pandemic.

“Looking at it as a scoreboard is the wrong way to think about it,” said Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “To think of it as something you can manipulate or slow down based on what the numbers look like speaks to a complete misunderstanding of what an infectious-disease response should be.”