Fauci and other top health officials will testify in Congress for the second time in a week.
Four of the top health officials in the United States, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, will testify in Congress on Tuesday about the coronavirus, which is spreading with increasing ferocity in at least 30 states.
The Senate health and education committee hearing was framed as an “update on progress to return to work and return to school safely.” But officials will likely grapple with a reverse idea, as a group of states pause or reverse the course of plans to reopen.
The hearing is scheduled to start at 10 a.m. EST, and The New York Times will have live coverage.
Dr. Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, will join Dr. Robert R. Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Dr. Stephen M. Hahn, Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration; and Admiral Brett P. Giroir, assistant secretary of health.
The four officials also appeared before House lawmakers last week, when Dr. Redfield warned of a second wave of the potentially crippling virus that would coincide with the flu season.
In an interview Monday, Dr. Redfield’s deputy, Dr. Anne Schuchat, made an even bleaker assessment of the virus: “This is really the beginning,” she told the Journal of the American Medical Association.
His comments came shortly after Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, played down the increase in cases, saying, “We are aware that there are embers that must be put out.”
Dr. Schuchat also dismissed the idea, promoted earlier this year by President Trump and others, that the summer heat could lower the infection rate. “In terms of the weather or the season that helps us, I don’t think we can count on that,” he said.
With new cases emerging in many parts of the country, at least a dozen states and cities are backing down on reopening plans.
In Arizona, where the case count is increasing, Governor Doug Ducey halted operations of bars, gyms, movie theaters, and water parks for 30 days and banned public events or gatherings of 50 or more people.
In Florida, where the daily case count hit record highs over the weekend, the city of Jacksonville said Monday that facial masks would be required in any covered public place where social estrangement was not possible. The city plans to host the Republican National Convention in August.
Case counts have increased dramatically in many of the states that were the first to reopen, including Florida and Texas, which recently forced bars to close again.
After a shaky start three months ago, the US government’s central aid program for small businesses is ending with the money to spare.
The paycheck protection program is slated to wrap up Tuesday after making $ 520 billion in loans intended to preserve workers’ jobs during the pandemic. But as new outbreaks increase across the country and force many states to rethink their plans to reopen businesses, the program is closing with more than $ 130 billion still in its coffers.
“The fact that it has gone so far in the small business sector is a major achievement, and those things are worth acknowledging and celebrating,” said John Lettieri, executive director of the Economic Innovation Group, an expert group focused on entrepreneurship. “But we are still in a public health crisis.”
The rapidly built and often chaotic aid program, administered by the Small Business Administration but run through banks, delivered money to nearly five million businesses across the country, granting them low-interest loans to cover approximately two and a half months. of your typical payroll costs. Those who use most of the money to pay employees can get their debt forgiven.
The program appears to have helped prevent the nation’s staggering job losses from worsening. Hiring rebounded more than expected in May, as companies in some of the hardest hit industries, especially restaurants, restored millions of jobs by retiring laid-off workers and hiring new ones.
Lenders mentioned two main reasons why money was left. First, most of the eligible companies that wanted a loan were finally able to get it. (The program limited each applicant to a single loan.) In addition, the complicated and changing requirements of the program discouraged some qualified borrowers, who feared they might not be able to get their loan forgiveness.
Most infected people do not transmit the coronavirus to another person. But a small number passes it on to many others at so-called superpreparation events.
“You can think about throwing a match in the ignition,” said Ben Althouse, a scientist at the Institute of Disease Modeling in Bellevue, Washington. “You throw a match, it may not light the ignition. You throw another match, it may not light the firewood. But then a match hits the right place, and suddenly the fire rises.”
According to scientists, understanding why some parties cause fires, while others do not, will be crucial in stopping the pandemic. They are trying to answer three questions: Who are the super-spreaders? When does the overlearning take place? And where?
Biological factors may be part of the answer, but some doctors suspect that circumstances play a larger role.
They have found that a lot of transmission appears to occur in a limited period of time that begins a couple of days after infection, even before symptoms arise. If people are not around many people during that window, they cannot get past it.
And certain places seem to lend themselves to supersension. A busy bar, for example, is full of people speaking loudly. Any one of them could vomit viruses without coughing. And without good ventilation, viruses can stay in the air for hours.
Scientists are optimistic that it may be possible to avoid crippling and general blockages by targeting superpredation events.
“By curbing activities in a fairly small proportion of our lives, we could reduce most of the risk,” said Adam Kucharski, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Just a few weeks ago, thousands of Southern Californians flocked to the beaches, Disneyland announced that it would soon reopen, and Whoopi Goldberg praised Governor Gavin Newsom in “The View” for the state’s progress in fighting the coronavirus. The worst, many thought of California, was behind them.
In fact, an alarming increase in cases across the state was just beginning.
Over the past week, California’s case count has exploded, surpassing 220,000 known infections and forcing Mr. Newsom to reverse the state’s reopening in some counties. On Monday, he said the number of people hospitalized in California had increased 43 percent in the past two weeks. More than 7,000 new cases were announced Monday in California, the highest total in a single day of the pandemic.
Los Angeles County, which has been averaging more than 2,000 new cases each day, topped 100,000 total cases on Monday, with the virus actively infecting one in 140 people, according to local health authorities. More than 2,800 cases were announced Monday in the county, most of any day during the pandemic.
On Sunday, Newsom closed bars in half a dozen counties, including Los Angeles County and the Central Valley, and recommended that eight other counties voluntarily close their nightclubs and hangouts. And Disneyland has rescinded its decision to open its doors.
California was the first state to close and one of the most aggressive in the fight against the virus. But the state that was so proactive in fighting the coronavirus spread is now forced to wonder what went wrong.
“To some extent I think our luck may have run out,” said Dr. Bob Wachter, professor and chair of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “This is faster and worse than I expected.”
The pandemic is now advancing across much of Russia’s vast interior, but that has not tempered the Kremlin’s determination to hold a national vote on constitutional amendments that, among other things, would allow President Vladimir V. Putin to remain in power until 2036.
With Moscow seemingly on the worst of the outbreak, Putin has declared victory over the virus and mobilized enormous resources to ensure that the referendum, which has already been postponed once, continues no matter what happens. Voting officially started last Thursday, but the big day is Wednesday, which has been declared a national holiday in hopes that more people will vote.
The number of new infections is declining in Russia, but that is mainly the result of a sharp decline in new infections in Moscow, the initial epicenter of the pandemic in the country.
The situation in the vast interior of Russia looks very different. During the past week, the pandemic entered its worst stage yet in a diverse set of Russian regions, including the Republic of Tyva on the border with Mongolia, and the Republic of Karachay-Cherkessia, an isolated area in the North Caucasus.
Despite this, local authorities have largely followed Moscow’s leadership, which entered into a strict closure in late March but has now lifted most restrictions.
In other news from around the world:
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After an increase in cases in the past two weeks, Leicester, a city of 340,000 people in the center England, will face tighter restrictions and will not join the rest of the country when its closure is eased on Saturday, authorities said.
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Australia, which showed early signs of reversing the coronavirus, is now battling spikes in its second-most populous state, Victoria, prompting authorities to announce blockades in the Melbourne metropolitan area beginning Wednesday night. On Tuesday, Victoria registered 60 new cases, her 14th consecutive day of double-digit increases. Australia, with a population of 25 million, reported only seven cases in its other states on Tuesday.
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The reports were contributed by Livia Albeck-Ripka, Stacy Cowley, Thomas Fuller, Abby Goodnough, Andrew Higgins, Shawn Hubler, Iliana Magra, Patricia Mazzei, Ivan Nechepurenko, Noah Weiland, Elizabeth Williamson, and Carl Zimmer.
