Here’s what you need to know:
- Trump wants churches to open, but in Germany, more infections emerge as worshipers return.
- The devastating toll of the virus nears 100,000 in the U.S. Our front page names some of the lost.
- As some Americans gather on a holiday weekend, Dr. Birx stresses the risks.
- C.D.C. error in counting tests baffles scientists.
- Hong Kong protesters, subdued for months by the virus, are back on the streets.
- With the virus reordering economies, more Italians are finding work as farm laborers.
- Tourism and cultural life are creeping back around the world, with a raft of caveats.
Trump wants churches to open, but in Germany, more infections emerge as worshipers return.
As President Trump presses U.S. officials to reopen houses of worship by declaring religious institutions essential, some European countries have already taken the plunge — sometimes with dire consequences.
In Germany, which for weeks now has allowed religious services, 40 churchgoers became infected with the coronavirus during a service at a Baptist church in Frankfurt, the health authorities said.
Six parishioners were hospitalized, according to Wladimir Pritzkau, a leader of the parish.
“We followed all the rules,” Mr. Pritzkau told the German news agency DPA, noting that the church did not know how many people were at the service on May 10.
The state of Hesse, where the infections occurred, has been allowing church services under special guidelines, including asking worshipers to keep five feet apart and requiring churches to have disinfectant readily available. Now, the church has since moved its weekend services, which are held in German and Russian, back online.
France on Sunday took tentative steps to reopen churches, mosques and synagogues. Officials were nudged by a legal challenge to a blanket ban on public worship that was not set to be lifted until the end of May.
The Council of State, France’s highest administrative court, ordered the government last Monday to reopen churches, mosques and synagogues within eight days, calling worship a fundamental freedom that could be reconciled with public health measures.
“It was a nice surprise,” said the Rev. Antoine De Folleville, who was preparing to offer his first public Mass in 10 weeks. “It’s a great joy to finally be reunited with our parishioners.”
There was a sense of both joy and anxiety in the church of St.-Germain-des-Prés in Paris, where Father De Folleville is the parish priest, as Roman Catholic worshipers returned for the first time in two months.
“How should Communion be given?” a woman asked. “With pliers?”
“No, we’ll wash our hands with alcoholic gel right before taking up the host,” said Father De Folleville, who was making final preparations.
In Jerusalem, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher reopened after a two-month lockdown. On the West Bank, thousands of Palestinians crowded into streets early Sunday in defiance of coronavirus restrictions, including many who demanded that the Palestinian authorities reopen mosques for Eid al-Fitr, the festival for the conclusion of the fasting month of Ramadan.
“The people want holiday prayers,” demonstrators chanted in front of the Palestinian Authority’s headquarters in the southern West Bank city of Hebron.
The devastating toll of the virus nears 100,000 in the U.S. Our front page names some of the lost.
Each one is more than a name. Each one had a unique life story. Each one succumbed to the coronavirus pandemic that swept across the globe, devastating families and industries and dealing a crippling blow to the world’s economy.
The death toll is approaching a grim marker: “One. Hundred. Thousand,” as our correspondent Dan Barry writes:
“A number is an imperfect measure when applied to the human condition. A number provides an answer to how many, but it can never convey the individual arcs of life, the 100,000 ways of greeting the morning and saying good night.
The immensity of such a sudden toll taxes our ability to comprehend, to understand that each number adding up to 100,000 represents someone among us just yesterday. Who was the 1,233rd person to die? The 27,587th? The 98,431st?
Why has this happened in the United States of 2020? Why has the virus claimed a disproportionately large number of black and Latino victims? Why were nursing homes so devastated? These questions of why and how and whom will be asked for decades to come.”
As the number of fatalities from Covid-19 passed 1.5 million, The New York Times sought to memorialize the tens of thousands who died of the coronavirus in the United States. The result: a print front page like no other, and an interactive digital counterpart, to frame the incalculable loss with a presentation of obituaries and death notices from newspapers around the country.
Mr. Trump, meanwhile, played golf at his members-only club in Virginia, his first game since shutdowns began, as states reopened businesses, restaurants and other activities. In Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz said he would allow houses of worship to open this week. In New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said that gatherings of up to 10 people would be allowed, provided that social-distancing protocols were followed.
Other governors — including Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, Mike DeWine of Ohio and Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey — were to appear on the Sunday talk shows.
A new study from Northern California found that, compared with white or Hispanic patients, black patients seeking care have more advanced cases of Covid-19. The finding suggested that black patients may have had limited access to medical care or that they postponed seeking help until later in the course of their illness, when the disease was more advanced.
As some Americans gather on a holiday weekend, Dr. Birx stresses the risks.
Confronted with footage of Americans crowding onto beaches over the holiday weekend, often without masks, Dr. Deborah Birx reiterated on Sunday how easy it could be to transmit the virus even by talking.
“We now have excellent scientific evidence of how far droplets go when we speak, or just simply talking to one another,” Dr. Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, said on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace.
“We know it’s important for people to socially interact, but we also know it’s important that we have to have masks on if we’re less than six feet, and that we have to maintain that six feet of distance.”
When Mr. Wallace asked her if crowded beaches could lead to a “super-spreader event,” with one asymptomatic person infecting many others, Dr. Birx stressed that people could be outside without massing close together.
“We want you to be outside,” she added, citing golfing, hiking and playing tennis with marked balls as some of the safer activities. “But really within that is the absolute requirement that across the country we know that there is still virus out there.”
Asked about President Trump’s announcement on Friday that he had deemed houses of worship “essential” and directed governors to let them reopen immediately, Dr. Birx said, “Although it may be safe for some to go to churches and social distance, it may not be safe for those with pre-existing conditions,” and urged vulnerable people to stay at home.
Dr. Birx also deflected a question from Mr. Wallace about whether she and Mr. Trump had underestimated the potency of the virus when they said in April that the total death count could be as low as 60,000. Deaths from the virus in the United States are now approaching 100,000.
“There have been different models we have been using all along and really trying to learn, primarily not just from models, but understanding what is happening in Spain and Italy and the U.K.,” she said.
“We understand our mortality rates are less than those three countries and that’s really due to the incredible work of our front line hospital workers. But we understand this number of infections has led to this level of mortality, and our job going forward is doing everything we can to prevent additional hospitalizations and mortality.”
C.D.C. error in counting tests baffles scientists.
As it tracks the spread of the coronavirus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is combining tests that detect active infection with those that detect recovery from Covid-19 — a system that muddies the picture of the pandemic but raises the percentage of Americans tested as President Trump boasts about testing.
Now that serology tests, which look for antibodies in the blood of people who have recovered, are more widespread, C.D.C. officials said on Friday they would work to separate them from the results of diagnostic tests, which detect active infection. One agency website that tracks the data has been lumping them together.
Stunned epidemiologists say data from antibody tests and active virus tests should never be mixed because diagnostic testing seeks to quantify the amount of active disease in the population. Serological testing can also be unreliable. And patients who have had both diagnostic and serology tests would be counted twice in the totals.
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” said Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida. “All of us are really baffled.”
Hong Kong protesters, subdued for months by the virus, are back on the streets.
The antigovernment movement that roiled Hong Kong for much of last year subsided this year as fears of the coronavirus kept many at home. But on Sunday, police officers fired tear gas as hundreds of protesters flouted social-distancing rules to demonstrate against China’s plans to impose national security laws on the semiautonomous territory.
Protesters gathered in a central shopping district around midday, chanting slogans against the government and the Chinese Communist Party like “Heavens will destroy the C.C.P.” and “Hong Kong independence is the only way out.”
Dozens of police officers in riot gear swarmed the area, but many protesters pressed around them, ignoring their warnings to disperse. Just before 1:30 p.m., the police fired at least four rounds of tear gas, sending protesters scrambling. The Hong Kong police said in a statement that they arrested 120 people, most on charges of unlawful assembly.
The protest was the biggest the territory had seen in several months. The Hong Kong government has banned public gatherings of more than eight people until at least June 4, and attempts since January to revive the protests were sparsely attended and quickly stifled by the police.
The protest took place days after China’s biggest political event of the year, the annual session of the National People’s Congress, kicked off in Beijing. The ruling Communist Party is trying to project strength amid global criticism of its response to the pandemic.
Many Hong Kong residents see China’s move to impose the security laws as a major blow to the city’s relative autonomy, perhaps an irreparable one.
In Beijing on Sunday, the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, asserted that the protests that had roiled Hong Kong posed a grave threat to national security, proving that such legislation was long overdue. “We must get it done without the slightest delay,” Mr. Wang said at a news briefing.
With the virus reordering economies, more Italians are finding work as farm laborers.
Only a few weeks ago, Massimiliano Cassina was running a fabric company that had international clients and specialized in sports T-shirts. But the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 30,000 Italians and wrecked the national economy also dealt a deathblow to his business. Desperate for a paycheck, he became one of an increasing number of Italians seeking a future in the country’s agrarian past.
“They gave me a chance,” said Mr. Cassina, 52, wearing a blue mask, blue rubber gloves and sweat-stained shirt. He now works on a small farm outside Rome, tending to corn stalks for the coming harvest.
The virus has drastically reordered society and economies, locking seasonal workers in their home countries while marooning Italians who worked in retail, entertainment, fashion and other once-mighty industries.
A return to the land once seemed reserved for natural wine hipsters or gentry sowing boutique gardens with ancient seeds, but more Italians are now considering the work of their grandparents as laborers on the large farms that are increasingly essential to feed a paralyzed country and continent.
Without them, hundreds of tons of broccoli, fava beans, fruit and vegetables are in danger of withering on the vine or rotting on the ground.
“The virus has forced us to rethink the models of development and the way the country works,” Teresa Bellanova, Italy’s agricultural minister, who is herself a former farmhand, said in an interview.
She said that the virus required Italy, which has remained at the vanguard of the epidemic and its consequences in Europe, to confront “a scarcity of food for many levels of the population,” including unemployed young professionals, and that agriculture needed to be “where the new generations can find a future.”
Tourism and cultural life are creeping back around the world, with a raft of caveats.
As countries begin to open their economies, a monthslong deep freeze on tourism and cultural life is gradually thawing — with caveats.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain announced that the country, which is highly dependent on tourism for the health of its economy, would allow international visitors in July.
Mr. Sánchez did not set a specific date, but his government has been under intense pressure to help salvage the summer for a tourism industry that accounted for 12 percent of Spain’s gross domestic output last year, when Spain received almost 84 million visitors.
“There will be a summer tourism season,” Mr. Sánchez said in a televised address on Saturday. “We will guarantee that tourists will not face any risks, nor will they bring any risk to our country.”
Exceltur, a Spanish tourism lobby, said that the decision to reopen in July could help reduce the cost of the lockdown, which began in mid-March, by about 20 billion euros, or about $22 billion. Exceltur previously forecast the Spanish tourism sector would lose as much as €92 billion in revenue this year.
In the United States, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston became the first major art museum to reopen since the country went into lockdown in March. Mask-wearing visitors encountered virus-specific restrictions even before they went inside on Saturday, lining up on large blue stickers placed six feet apart.
Other countries are also eager to restart their tourism industry, with officials in Greece suggesting an “air bridge” with other nations that have few cases of the coronavirus.
International flights to Athens are to resume June 15, followed by the rest of the country’s airports on July 1. But tourists will be admitted only if their home countries meet certain “epidemiological criteria,” officials said.
Britain will make international travelers self-isolate for 14 days from June 8. The government published a list of travelers who would be exempt, including truck drivers, seasonal farmworkers and medical workers, but airlines and tourism companies say that the move to order travelers to stay indoors at a home or hotel will damage their industries. Home Secretary Priti Patel said the move was necessary to “reduce the risk of cases crossing our border.”
In a reciprocal move, France announced that people arriving from Britain would have to self-isolate for 14 days from June 8. Travelers arriving from Spain by plane will also be asked to go into quarantine from Monday.
In Australia, officials on Sunday laid out plans to allow tourism in parts of the state of Victoria starting in June. Skiing, for example, will be allowed starting June 22. But many ski resorts plan to operate at half capacity, The Canberra Times reported, and they’re bracing for a raft of distancing restrictions.
New York reports fewer than 100 new virus deaths for the first time since March.
The number of daily coronavirus deaths in New York State dipped below 100 for the first time since late March, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced. The governor reported 84 new deaths of the virus on Saturday, the lowest daily death toll since March 24.
Mr. Cuomo called the number of new casualties “a tragedy,” but he said that he could not ignore that the downward trend was a positive sign.
“The fact that it is down as low as it is, is really overall good news,” Mr. Cuomo said during his daily briefing from the governor’s mansion in Albany. “In my head, I was always looking to get under 100. For me, it’s just a sign that we are making real progress.”
During the peak of the outbreak, when 800 people a day were dying from the coronavirus, a death toll below 100 felt like a faraway milestone, Mr. Cuomo said. “If you can get under 100, you can breathe a sigh of relief,” he said, recalling a conversation he had with a physician at the time. “Getting below 100 was almost impossible.”
The number of hospitalizations, intubations and overall new cases also continued to see a steady decline, Mr. Cuomo said, adding, “What we are doing is working.”
As the number of cases and deaths decline, lockdown measures relaxed further. Mr. Cuomo said that groups of up to 10 people may gather anywhere the state. He urged residents to continue to practice social distancing and other safety measures at any get-together.
Some businesses turn to pay cuts to avoid layoffs.
Martin A. Kits van Heyningen feared he was letting the team down at the company he co-founded, KVH Industries. Rather than lay off workers in response to the coronavirus pandemic, he had decided to cut salaries. When he emailed a video explaining his decision at 3 a.m. last month, he was prepared for a barrage of complaints.
Instead, he woke to an outpouring of support from employees that left him elated.
“It was one of the hardest things I’ve done, but it turned out to be the best day of my life at work,” Mr. Kits van Heyningen said. “I was trying to keep their morale up. Instead, they kept my morale up.”
Even as American employers let tens of millions of workers go, some companies are choosing a different path. By instituting across-the-board salary reductions, especially at senior levels, they have avoided layoffs.
The trend is a reversal of traditional management theory, which held that it was better to cut positions and dismiss a limited number of workers than to lower pay for everyone.
There is often a genuine desire to protect employees, but long-term financial interests are a major consideration as well, said Donald Delves, a compensation expert with Willis Towers Watson.
“A lot has happened in the last 10 years,” Mr. Delves said. “Companies learned the hard way that once you lay off a bunch of people, it’s expensive and time-consuming to hire them back. Employees are not interchangeable.”
China promises more consumer spending and jobs.
With the coronavirus outbreak in China at least temporarily under control, consumer spending is recovering and plans are underway to create jobs, Chinese officials said on Sunday.
Retail sales plunged in February and only gradually rose in March and April even as industrial production rebounded. Ning Jizhe, vice chairman of China’s top economic planning agency, said on Sunday that consumer spending continued to recover this month but did not predict whether it would catch up with last year’s level.
“Covid-19 has had a broad impact on the economy, and consumption bears the brunt,” he said at a news conference in Beijing. Earlier on Sunday, the Chinese mainland reported three new confirmed infections, including one locally transmitted case and two from overseas.
Governments in the United States and elsewhere have paid money directly to households as the outbreak hits global growth. China appears to be more interested in allocating money to investment programs.
Mr. Ning outlined a two-pronged plan to create jobs. First, China will start public works construction programs in rural areas that are meant to employ migrant workers. The national government has approved an additional $140 billion in borrowing by local governments this year to help pay for these projects, he said.
Second, Mr. Ning said, the government plans to create nine million jobs in cities, especially for this year’s 8.7 million college graduates. Incentives will be provided for business start-ups as well as large employers.
More than 300,000 jobs will be allocated to China’s poorest people as part of the government’s campaign to alleviate extreme poverty this year, said Cong Liang, the agency’s secretary general.
Reporting was contributed by Abby Goodnough, Dan Barry, Christopher F. Schuetze, Constant Méheut, Adam Rasgon, Raphael Minder, Jason Horowitz, Iliana Magra, Nelson D. Schwartz, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Sheila Kaplan, Sarah Mervosh, Keith Bradsher, Mujib Mashal, Austin Ramzy, Tiffany May, Elaine Yu, Yonette Joseph, Peter Baker, Max Fisher, Michael Hardy, Mike Ives, Michael Levenson, Sharon Otterman, Elizabeth Paton, Roni Caryn Rabin, Luis Ferré Sadurní, Edgar Sandoval, Marc Stein, Matt Stevens, Derrick Bryson Taylor, James Wagner, Vivian Wang and Alex Williams.
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