Here’s what you need to know:
- As states scramble to put out fires, Fauci and other top U.S. health officials will go back before Congress.
- Five key developments you may have missed on Thursday.
- Europe’s economic contraction is its worst on record.
- Native Americans appear to be hit particularly hard by the virus, though the data is incomplete.
- Britain brings in new restrictions for millions after signs of increasing spread.
- Many African countries are testing too little to track the virus, an aid group warns.
As states scramble to put out fires, Fauci and other top U.S. health officials will go back before Congress.
Two days after U.S. deaths surpassed 150,000, three familiar federal health officials, including Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, will return to Capitol Hill to testify in front of a new audience: the House’s special select committee investigating the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic.
Dr. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, will be joined on Friday morning by Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Adm. Brett P. Giroir, the assistant secretary for health and the administration’s point person on coronavirus testing.
The hearing begins at 9 a.m. and will be streamed online by The New York Times.
The three witnesses last testified a month ago before lawmakers in the Republican-controlled Senate, when the subject was school reopening.
But the Democrat-led House select committee has had a hard time securing Dr. Fauci and his colleagues as witnesses. The Trump administration initially refused to make them available.
The hearing is taking place as states across the country are reimposing limits in response to a resurgence of cases — a turn of events reflected in the title lawmakers gave the hearing: “The Urgent Need for a National Plan to Contain the Coronavirus.”
The session is expected to center on three overlapping subjects: testing, vaccines and the push in some quarters to send children back to school. On Thursday, the president, meeting with reporters, again stressed his desire for students to return to the classroom.
With President Trump clearly intent on announcing promising vaccine news, it has fallen to Dr. Fauci to offer reassurances that the federal government is moving quickly but safely.
Dr. Redfield will most likely be asked about the C.D.C.’s shift on reopening schools. The agency’s recently published guidelines tilt strongly toward reopening, listing numerous benefits of in-person education and playing down potential health risks.
For Admiral Giroir. the questions are likely to focus on delays in test results across the South, where local health officials have complained of excruciating wait times.
The coronavirus panel was established this spring by Speaker Nancy Pelosi in large part to put a check on how the federal government is spending the trillions of dollars in emergency aid. But its mandate has broadened to include a panoply of issues, including racial disparities in the pandemic and nursing home outbreaks.
Some of the House’s fieriest members are on the panel, including Representative Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican who has been a regular skeptic of Dr. Fauci and public health mandates, including mask wearing.
Several of the panel’s prominent Democrats are also not known for shying away from conflict, including its chairman, Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, and Representative Maxine Waters of California.
The hearing will take place a day after Florida and Arizona broke single-day records for deaths from the virus, with Florida reporting 253 deaths on Thursday and Arizona 158. Mississippi also set a record, with 48 deaths. That state and three others — Missouri, Hawaii and Ohio — set single-day records for new cases.
Five key developments you may have missed on Thursday.
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The pandemic’s toll on businesses in the United States became emphatically clearer as the government detailed the most devastating three-month economic collapse on record, which wiped away nearly five years of growth. Read more on the economic crisis.
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President Trump, whose unsteady handling of the virus has left him trailing in the polls, floated the idea of changing the date of the presidential election — a suggestion he has no authority to enact, and which instantly drew rare rebukes from top Republicans. Read more on Mr. Trump’s words and the reaction to them.
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U.S. lawmakers failed to extend jobless benefits that are expiring today. On Thursday, the Senate dissolved into partisan bickering over a sweeping economic stabilization package, clashing over dueling proposals. Tens of millions of Americans have depended on the $600-a-week unemployment aid for months. Read more about the impasse.
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Herman Cain, who ran for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination and was a recent contender for a top Federal Reserve job, died after being hospitalized with the coronavirus. Read Mr. Cain’s obituary.
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Cases in New Jersey are rising again. Just a week ago, the state recorded its lowest seven-day average of new daily cases — 224 — since the numbers peaked in the state in early April, according to a database maintained by The New York Times. But the state has averaged 416 cases per day over the past week. Read more about the uptick in cases in New Jersey.
Europe’s economic contraction is its worst on record.
The European economy tumbled into its worst recession on record in the second quarter, as quarantines across the continent brought business, trade and consumer spending to a grinding halt.
From April to June, gross domestic product fell by 11.9 percent from the first quarter in the 27 member states of the European Union, and by 12.1 percent in the core group of countries that use the euro currency, according to figures released on Friday by Eurostat, the E.U. statistics agency.
On an annualized basis, European Union economies shrank by 14.4 percent, and eurozone economies by 15 percent, the sharpest contractions since statistics started being kept in 1995.
Over the same period, the United States economy shrank by 9.5 percent on the previous quarter and by 32.9 percent on an annual basis, according to figures published on Thursday.
But in Europe, there were signs that the worst may have passed, and that a tentative recovery has been gaining some traction as governments unleash enormous stimulus spending. Lengthy lockdowns, while painful for business and industry, have helped curb a widespread resurgence of the pandemic in most countries, easing reopening.
The figures were especially grim for nations on Europe’s southern rim, which were among the worst affected by the virus and which faced longer quarantine periods than northern European countries.
In Spain, which has had one of Europe’s highest death tolls, the economy shrank by a staggering 22.1 percent from a year ago and by 18.5 percent from the first quarter. France, the eurozone’s second-largest economy, shrank by 19 percent from a year ago and by 13.8 percent from the first quarter; and Italy, the third-largest economy in the zone, contracted by 17.3 percent from a year ago and by 12.4 percent from the first quarter. France is officially in recession, with three straight quarters of contraction.
On Thursday, the authorities reported that the German economy, Europe’s largest, shrank by 11.7 percent from the same period last year and by 10.1 percent from the previous quarter.
European Union leaders last week agreed to a landmark stimulus of 750 billion euros, or about $884 billion, to rescue their economies and to anchor a mild turnaround that had started to take hold after lockdowns began to be lifted.
But risks abound as surges in new cases are reported, increasing the possibility of more quarantines.
“The hard part of this recovery is set to start about now,” Bert Colijn, senior economist for the eurozone at ING Bank, said in a note to clients.
Native Americans appear to be hit particularly hard by the virus, though the data is incomplete.
Even with significant gaps in the available data, there are strong indications that Native American people have been disproportionately affected by the virus.
The rate of known cases in the eight counties with the largest populations of Native Americans is nearly double the national average, a New York Times analysis has found. The analysis cannot determine which individuals are testing positive for the virus, but these counties are home to one in six U.S. residents who describe themselves in census surveys as non-Hispanic and American Indian or Alaska Native.
And there are many other smaller counties with significant populations of Native Americans that have elevated case rates, including Yakima County, Wash. The Times identified at least 15 counties that have elevated case rates and are home to sizable numbers of Native American residents, ranging from large metropolitan areas in Arizona to rural communities in Nebraska and Mississippi.
Native Americans at Risk
Counties with large Native American populations with reported infection rates above 1,500 cases per 100,000 residents.
Wash.
Yakima
S.D.
Buffalo
Thurston
Iowa
Neb.
Utah
San Juan
San Juan
Coconino
N.C.
Robeson
Apache
Ariz.
Okla.
McKinley
La Paz
Navajo
N.M.
Maricopa
Miss.
McCurtain
Pinal
Neshoba
Wash.
Yakima
S.D.
Buffalo
Lyman
Thurston
Neb.
Utah
D.C.
San Juan
San Juan
Coconino
N.C.
Ariz.
Robeson
McKinley
Apache
Okla.
La Paz
N.M.
Navajo
Miss.
Maricopa
Pinal
Neshoba
McCurtain
La.
Terrebonne
Yakima
Buffalo
Lyman
Thurston
Apache
San Juan
San Juan
Robeson
Coconino
McCurtain
McKinley
La Paz
Navajo
Neshoba
Maricopa
Pinal
Terrebonne
“I feel as though tribal nations have an effective death sentence when the scale of this pandemic, if it continues to grow, exceeds the public resources available,” said Fawn Sharp, the president of the Quinault Indian Nation and of the National Congress of American Indians.
The trends are troubling enough that congressional leaders have asked the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to examine them.
In New Mexico, Native American and Alaska Native people have accounted for nearly 40 percent of virus cases, though they make up 9 percent of the population.
Hospitalization rates published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also suggest that Native American people are overrepresented among those who become seriously ill from the virus. Federal data tracking individual coronavirus cases often omits race and ethnicity information.
Native Americans — particularly those living on reservations — are more prone to contract the virus because of crowded housing conditions that make social distancing difficult, said Allison Barlow, director of the Center for American Indian Health at Johns Hopkins University. And years of underfunded health systems, food and water insecurity and other factors contribute to underlying health conditions that can make the illness more severe once contracted.
Global roundup
Britain brings in new restrictions for millions after signs of increasing spread.
Britain has barred millions of people in northern England from meeting other households at their homes, after a day on which it reported 38 new coronavirus deaths and nearly 900 known new infections, its highest case number in a month.
“Most of the transmission is happening between households visiting each other, and people visiting relatives and friends,” the health secretary, Matt Hancock, said on the BBC.
The move was a sudden one, coming into effect at midnight, less than three hours after the authorities’ initial announcement Thursday night, and with official guidance on what the rules cover not published until the following morning.
The new restrictions affect Manchester and its surrounding towns and suburbs, plus areas in East Lancashire and West Yorkshire. Different households aren’t allowed to meet at home or in a private garden, with potential fines of up to 100 pounds, about $130.
The authorities also discouraged people who don’t live with each other from meeting in restaurants or pubs, although this remains legal.
The announcement came just before Eid al-Adha, and several of the affected areas have large Muslim communities. Places of worship will remain open with social distancing measures but the authorities recommended praying outdoors.
Opposition lawmakers criticized the timing of the announcement. “No one would argue with putting in place local action,” Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, tweeted. “But announcing measures affecting potentially millions of people late at night on Twitter is a new low for the government’s communications during this crisis.”
Britain remains the worst-hit country in Europe, with nearly 56,000 confirmed coronavirus deaths.
Here are other developments from around the globe:
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Vietnam, which has been fighting a fresh virus outbreak after more than three months without reporting a locally transmitted case, has announced its first death from the coronavirus. The victim was a 70-year-old resident of the city of Hoi An who had been living with kidney disease for more than a decade. The man was admitted to a hospital on July 9 with chest tightness and fatigue, and tested positive for the virus on Sunday. He died Friday morning.
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On Friday, Japan announced 1,305 new cases, breaking a record set the day before. As cases spike in Tokyo, Gov. Yuriko Koike has requested that karaoke venues and bars and restaurants serving alcohol close by 10 p.m. from Aug. 3 through the end of the month. Businesses that cooperate will be offered 200,000 yen, or about $1,900.
Many African countries are testing too little to track the virus, an aid group warns.
A stark lack of testing in many African countries has kept officials from being able to track the pandemic, prompting fears that a recent surge in cases across the continent may be just the “tip of the iceberg,” according to the International Rescue Committee.
Each country in Africa where the committee works has conducted fewer than 8,000 tests per million people, the group said. By contrast, Britain has conducted 205,782 tests per million, the United Arab Emirates 472,590 per million, and Singapore 199,904 per million, the committee said.
The committee cited Tanzania (63 tests per million), Niger (373 tests per million), Chad (383 tests per million), Democratic Republic of Congo (467 tests per million) and Burundi (563 tests per million) as having the lowest testing rates among the African countries where it works.
The committee, a global humanitarian aid organization, said that testing in many African countries was falling far short of the rate of at least one test per 1,000 people per week recommended by the World Health Organization.
The organization said many African nations needed international support to increase their testing capacity or the continent could face “an undetected and uncontrolled spread — and a response fighting with a hand tied behind its back.”
“The testing shortfalls make it nearly impossible to understand the extent of the pandemic — let alone put measures in place to stop it,” Stacey Mearns, a senior technical adviser on emergency health at the committee, said in a statement.
Reporting was contributed by Liz Alderman, Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio, Kate Conger, Robert Gebeloff, Michael Levenson, Eshe Nelson, Richard A. Oppel Jr., Richard C. Paddock, Elian Peltier, Matt Phillips, Austin Ramzy, Motoko Rich, Eliza Shapiro, Neil Vigdor, Mihir Zaveri.
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