June 25 (Reuters) – A massive plume of dust whipped up from the Sahara desert will hover over the U.S. Southeast this weekend, forecasters say, shrouding the region in a brown haze and raising more health concerns in states where the coronavirus crisis is worsening.
The 3,500-mile-long (5,600 km) cloud, dubbed the “Godzilla dust cloud,” traveled 5,000 miles (8,047 km) from North Africa before reaching the region stretching from Florida west into Texas and north into North Carolina through Arkansas, the National Weather Service (NWS) said.
“It’s a really dry layer of air that contains these very fine dust particulates. It occurs every summer,” said NWS meteorologist Patrick Blood. “Some of these plumes contain more particles, and right now we expecting a very large plume of dust in the Gulf Coast.”
This year, the dust is the most dense it has been in a half a century, several meteorologists told Reuters earlier this week as it crossed over the Caribbean.
The Saharan dust plume will hang over the region until the middle of next week, deteriorating the air quality in Texas, Florida and other states where the number of COVID-19 cases has recently spiked.
“There’s emerging evidence of potential interactions between air pollution and the risk of COVID, so at this stage we are concerned,” said Gregory Wellenius, an professor of environmental health at Boston University’s School of Public Health.
Air pollution can be especially detrimental for people who are at risk for or suffer from cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses, Wellenius added. Heart and lung problems heighten the risk of severe COVID-19.
The plume will create hazy skies and lower visibility. In the past, dust plumes from Africa have dumped a thin layer of dust onto vehicles in Houston, where air quality is always a concern, Blood said.
The dry air mass that carries the dust can suppress tropical storm and hurricane formation and can enhance and illuminate sunrises and sunsets, meteorologists said. (Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
President Donald Trump’s White House is rolling out a new “skills-based hiring” initiative for the federal government — but it faced instant backlash by making the president’s older daughter the new policy’s figurehead.
In a video promoting the initiative, Ivanka Trump claimed that her father was going to “overhaul the way the federal government hires,” and said that the president wants to “fill federal job vacancies based on people having the skill, the passion, the drive, the competency to do the job, not purely based on outdated career or licensing requirements.”
Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, have been repeatedly criticized for getting plum appointments in the White House despite having never worked in government before Trump was elected in 2016.
Kushner in particular has drawn scrutiny for being given a massive portfolio of duties ranging from overhauling the entire executive branch, bringing peace to the Middle East, and containing the novel coronavirus.
Given this, Ivanka’s video about “skills-based hiring” was poorly received — check out some comments below.
It’s so nice of Daughter-Wife Ivanka, who was hired at the White House despite having no skills, to take time out of her busy day of doing absolutely nothing to tell everyone about skills-based hiring
— Trumpy Trumpy (parody) (@outofcontroljb) June 26, 2020
Skills-based? Uh-oh looks like Jared and Ivanka are out of a job. Seriously what skills do they have besides knowing her daddy? Oh I get it. Loyalty to Trump will be the only “skill” considered.
— Right Matters, Truth Matters (@RealDanB95) June 26, 2020
WASHINGTON — Applicants for federal government jobs will now be vetted based on their skills rather than if they have a relevant college degree after President Trump on Friday signed an executive order directing his agencies to change their hiring practices.
At a signing ceremony at the White House, the president and other administration officials said the order would create a more merit-based system and opportunities for Americans who had previously been excluded from the workforce.
“The federal government will no longer be narrowly focused on where you went to school, but the skills and the talents that you bring to the job,” Trump said during the signing which coincided with a meeting of his American Workforce Policy Advisory Board.
The order will direct federal agencies to shift to skills- and competency-based hiring rather than degree-based hiring which “excludes capable candidates and undermines labor-market efficiencies,” the order read.
“This will allow us to better recognize the talents and competencies of all Americans we hire,” the First Daughter said, calling on the private sector to follow suit.
With 2.1 million civilian workers, the federal government is the largest employer in the US and the order will open doors to the two-thirds of American adults who do not possess a college degree.
White House aides said the new order would level the playing field and lift barriers to employment with a whopping 47 million Americans filing jobless claims since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.
Job applicants for federal gigs will be now be vetted by relevant experts who will assess whether they possess the skills and ability to perform the job that they’re applying for, said Michael Regas, the acting chief of the Office of Personnel Management which oversees all federal hiring.
College degree requirements won’t be tossed completely, but skills in jobs where having a degree is less important will be stressed under the new order, which will be implemented by Regas’ office.
“Those without a degree are at a a major disadvantage in the federal hiring process. While education credentials are critical in many lines of work, such as the medical and legal field, this is far less clear in other areas,” Regas said.
“The civil service will create a more merit-based system. I’m very eager to pursue the directive the President will sign today,” he continued, vowing to overhaul standards that are “limiting opportunity for those with diverse job backgrounds.”
In a major reversal, the Republican governors of Florida and Texas rolled back their states’ aggressive reopenings Friday — which President Trump had touted as successful national models — ordering bars to close and restaurants to reduce capacity as coronavirus infections surged.
Florida banned alcohol consumption at bars as new coronavirus cases neared 9,000, almost double the previous record set two days ago. The state has reported 111,724 COVID-19 cases since March, more than a fifth of them this week, and 3,327 deaths as of Thursday.
Florida officials attributed the new outbreak to young people crowding bars that reopened three weeks ago at half capacity, although many patrons ignored social distancing restrictions. The state’s seven-day average for positive COVID-19 tests has tripled since the start of the month to 13.4%.
Infections have risen dramatically across the nation following business reopenings and protests that began last month after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
In Texas, where Vice President Mike Pence was scheduled to visit Sunday for an indoor “Celebrate Freedom” event at a 14,000-member Dallas megachurch, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott announced he was effectively closing bars and reducing restaurant capacity from 75% to 50%.
Democrats leading the state’s largest counties and cities have been pressuring the governor to reopen more slowly, to no avail.
What we’ve seen in Gov. Greg Abbott’s response to the coronavirus is the damage that hyper-individualism can do and has done to this country.
Dallas County’s chief executive, Clay Jenkins, called on Abbott to limit public gatherings of 10 or more people ahead of the Fourth of July, noting the event that Pence planned to attend was “not really safe, but they have a right to do it.”
“We’d all be better served if those leading the response were at their desks working their butts off instead of holding events,” Jenkins said.
Texas’ major cities have seen hospitals fill with COVID-19 patients in recent days as Abbott refused to issue statewide mask or stay-at-home orders, insisting that reopening should proceed.
“This virus is out of control in Houston,” said Marvin Odum, a former Shell Oil president serving as Houston’s COVID-19 relief and recovery advisor.
Houston’s infection rate has tripled during the last three months, with eight deaths Friday, for a total of 216. The average age of those testing positive has fallen from 50 to 40, officials said.
As concern mounted about large gatherings at parks and beaches this summer, Abbott on Friday ordered rafting and tubing outfitters to close and said outdoor gatherings of 100 or more must be approved by local government.
Businesses like hair salons, zoos and outdoor bars that were scheduled to reopen Monday will now stay closed, the San Francisco health director said, amid a surge in infection rates.
The announcement came less than two months after Texas began a phased reopening that Trump and other Republicans highlighted among the country’s earliest and purportedly the most effective. But as cases increased this month, leaders in the state’s largest cities and counties imposed mask requirements and lobbied for statewide restrictions to slow the virus’ spread.
Texas has reported more than 135,000 coronavirus cases and at least 2,317 deaths, mostly in the counties including Dallas and Houston. More than 17,000 new COVID-19 cases were reported in the last three days and a record number of positive tests — 5,996 — on Thursday. Hospitalizations also set a record, and Abbott suspended elective medical procedures in the state’s major cities to increase hospital capacity. The state infection rate reached 12%, a red flag that Abbott said led him to slow the state’s reopening.
“As I said from the start, if the positivity rate rose above 10%, the state of Texas would take further action to mitigate the spread of COVID-19,” Abbott said in a Friday statement. “At this time, it is clear that the rise in cases is largely driven by certain types of activities, including Texans congregating in bars. The actions in this executive order are essential to our mission to swiftly contain this virus and protect public health. We want this to be as limited in duration as possible.”
Abbott urged people to stay home, warning that a “massive outbreak” is sweeping through Texas. He didn’t say when the newly imposed restrictions would be lifted.
City and county leaders in Houston — Texas’ largest city, in a county of more than 4.6 million people — announced that they had reached the worst COVID-19 threat level. Texas Medical Center, billed as the largest in the world, was expected to fill in days; a local arena was on standby for overflow. They called on Abbott to reinstate a stay-at-home order last invoked in March.
“We find ourselves careening into an overwhelming and catastrophic situation,” said Lina Hidalgo, chief executive of Harris County, which includes Houston.
Hidalgo appeared visibly upset as she explained that the latest report on public health data “begs for aggressive and sustained action,” that it took weeks to flatten the curve of infections this spring, and now “we may not have weeks.”
Local officials have required people to wear masks at Houston-area businesses, and violating the order carries potential fines. Hidalgo also announced a local ban Friday on public gatherings of more than 100 people through the Fourth of July. But she noted it was not within her power to issue a stay-home order — only the governor could do that, and she asked him repeatedly to do so.
“What works is a stay-home requirement. What does not work is the status quo,” Hidalgo said, calling anything in between “a gamble and an experiment on our own people” that is “setting us up for failure.”
She said that the state had reopened too quickly and that other parts of the country should learn from Texas’ mistake.
“Consider us the canary in the coal mine,” Hidalgo said. “There are no shortcuts to getting around the crisis.”
Arizona and Florida have seen similar COVID-19 increases after reopening this spring.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had been downplaying the widening outbreak, changed his tone this week, promising that state agencies would crack down on those violating COVID-19 restrictions. But like the Texas governor, DeSantis stopped short of requiring residents to wear masks or stay home.
Speaking at Gulf Coast Medical Center in Fort Myers on Friday, the governor said trying to police such mandates “would backfire.”
Some Florida cities and counties already have required masks inside public buildings. DeSantis said those decisions are up to local officials.
“They’re going to have to figure out how they’re going to use the long arm of the law to enforce it or not,” he said. “We’re going to continue to put out the messaging, we’re going to continue to put out the guidance, and we’re going to trust people to make good decisions.”
If the rise in cases was solely attributable to more testing, the rate of positive test results would decrease or at least hold steady. But while the number of daily tests performed has steadily increased from under 100,000 in March to 460,000 to 640,000 this week, the positive rate had fallen from 10 to 20 percent in early March to about 4 percent in early June before climbing back up to 5 to 7 percent this week.
Increased testing in other countries has not produced the uptick in the positivity rate seen in the United States. Russia, for example, has ramped up its testing to about 300,000 a day in recent weeks from about 200,000 in May. But its positive rate has continued to hover at around 3 to 5 percent.
In states with the most severe outbreaks, that trend is starker still. Positive rates in Texas and Florida have increased to 10 to 20 percent this week from rates that were generally below 10 percent in May — a reality the Republican governors of both states have acknowledged.
“Clearly you’re seeing this, this is real,” Gov. Rick DeSantis of Florida said during a news conference on Tuesday. “Now they are testing more than they were for sure, but they’re also testing positive at a higher rate than they were before. And so that would tell you there’s probably been an escalation and transmission over the last seven to 10 days.”
Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas acknowledged the same point.
“If you look at the growth or even the decline in the number of people who were testing positive as well as the positivity rate all the way through the early part of May, Texas was moving in a very productive position,” he said on Monday. “Then around the time of Memorial Day, there was an increase, and that increase has maintained for several weeks now, necessitating that next steps be taken.”
What Was Said
“Fatalities are declining all across the country.”
This is misleading. While official death counts are most likely underreported, Mr. Pence is right that nationwide, deaths are continuing to decrease, though fatalities are rising or holding steady in several states such as Arizona, California, Florida, North Carolina and Texas.
Moreover, public health experts have urged caution that this will continue to be the case. Asked whether still declining fatalities were because of younger, healthier people contracting the disease, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, told Congress this week that it was “too early to make that kind of link.”
“Deaths always lag considerably behind cases,” he said. “You might remember that at the time that New York was in their worst situation where the deaths were going up and yet the cases were starting to go down, the deaths only came down multiple weeks later.”
Curious about the accuracy of a claim? Email factcheck@nytimes.com.
The killing of George Floyd by police has sparked ongoing protests calling for the city to defund the Minneapolis Police Department. On Friday, the city council took the first of many steps to make that a reality.
Kerem Yucel /AFP via Getty Images
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Kerem Yucel /AFP via Getty Images
The killing of George Floyd by police has sparked ongoing protests calling for the city to defund the Minneapolis Police Department. On Friday, the city council took the first of many steps to make that a reality.
Kerem Yucel /AFP via Getty Images
The Minneapolis City Council on Friday unanimously approved a proposal to eliminate the city’s police department, marking the first step toward establishing a new “holistic” approach to public safety.
The move follows more than a month of national outrage and protests against police brutality in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, a Black man who died after an officer pressed his knee into his neck for more than eight minutes.
“Young Black and brown people in the streets made this happen. Black organizers demanding abolition for generations made this happen,” said Miski Noor of Black Visions Collective in a statement.
“Now, on this new terrain, Minneapolis can start practicing a new vision of safety that defends Black lives,” Noor said.
While she was critical of the shortcomings of the amendment passed Friday, Noor added, “we are closer than any time in history, and anywhere else in the country, to a safe, thriving city without police.”
Under the proposed plan, the city would eliminate the existing police department and replace it with “a department of community safety and violence prevention, which will have responsibility for public safety services prioritizing a holistic, public health-oriented approach.”
The department would be overseen by a director, nominated by the mayor and approved by the city council. Only individuals with “non-law enforcement experience in community safety services, including but not limited to public health and/or restorative justice approaches,” will be eligible to hold the post, according to the amendment.
Additionally, the city could keep a much smaller division of law enforcement in effect under the supervision of the department of community safety and violence prevention.
“We are going straight into the architecture of how safety is provided for in our community and we’re going straight into the heart of the foundations of that work,” council member Alondra Cano said.
She added that “the Council has been fielding ongoing calls from residents for accountability, systems change, and community-led safety.”
Despite unanimous support Friday, the amendment faces a number of bureaucratic obstacles before voters can vote on it in November.
Gov. Gavin Newsom urged Imperial County to reinstate its shelter-in-place order Friday as new coronavirus cases overwhelm its hospital system, but stopped short of saying other counties should follow suit.
Southern California’s Imperial County is one of 15, including Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties, that the state has flagged for increased monitoring. It’s home to California’s highest per-capita case rate, with 3,000 cases per 100,000 residents, and has seen a test positivity rate of 23% over the last two weeks — drastically higher than California’s overall 5.3%.
“We’re now in a position where we are working with county officials and advising them to pull back and once again re-institute their stay-at-home orders,” Newsom said in a press briefing Friday, adding, “If they’re not able to come to some consensus, I am committed to intervening.”
As the outbreak has worsened in the county — which borders San Diego County and Mexico — over 500 sick people have been transferred out of the overburdened hospital system. Over the next few days, the state will convene with local officials to decide next steps and push for an immediate tightening of restrictions.
Newsom’s comments appeared limited to Imperial County. Other coronavirus epicenters such as Los Angeles have been approved for variances despite rising case and hospitalization numbers, a move that Newsom defended earlier this week.
When asked directly whether he would consider toggling back restrictions on a statewide basis, the governor said counties are allowed to “consider the specifics” of their own jurisdiction but that the state, too, reserves the right to do so.
“California is not one-size-fits-all … when you look at the prism of California, the only responsible way to look at it is through a bottom-up lens,” Newsom said.
The state confirmed another 5,052 positive COVID-19 Thursday and another 81 deaths, pushing the state’s confirmed case count to 200,476, according to data compiled by this news organization.
Before this week, there had been two days on which the number of new cases in California was higher than 4,000. Of the four days this week, there has been just one with less than 5,000 cases.
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President Trump announced Friday that he signed an executive order to protect American monuments, memorials and statues and threatened those who try to pull them down with “long prison time.”
“I just had the privilege of signing a very strong Executive Order protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues – and combatting recent Criminal Violence,” Trump tweeted. “Long prison terms for these lawless acts against our Great Country!”
The new order enforces laws prohibiting the desecration of public monuments, the vandalism of government property, and recent acts of violence, withholds federal support tied to public spaces from state and local governments that have failed to protect public monuments, and withdraws federal grants for jurisdictions and law enforcement agencies that fail to stop their desecration.
It also provides assistance for protecting the federal statues.
Meanwhile on Friday evening, Attorney General Bill Barr directed the creation of a task force to counter anti-government extremists, specifically naming those who support the far-right “boogaloo” movement and those who identify as Antifa.
The task force will be headed by Craig Carpenito, the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, and Erin Nealy Cox, U.S. Attorney for the district of Northern Texas, and will be composed of U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, the FBI and other relevant departments, according to a press release. The group will share information with local and state law enforcement and will provide training on identifying anti-government extremists, according to an internal Justice Department memo.
The president has been teasing his order related to memorials all week, as historic monuments and statues have become the targets of anger and vandalism during Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of George Floyd‘s police custody death in Minneapolis at the end of May.
The initial statues under fire were Confederate soldiers and generals largely in the South due to the treatment of African-Americans, and even some high-level military officials called for the renaming of Army bases named after Confederate generals. The anger has since spread to monuments of former presidents and others deemed to be “colonizers,” such as Christopher Columbus, and even some who fought against slavery.
On Friday night, protesters plan to try to tear down the Emancipation Statue of Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln Park. The statue shows the 16th president holding the Emancipation Proclamation next to a kneeling, shackled slave. Protesters say it does not depict the role slaves had in securing their own freedom.
Last weekend protesters tied ropes and tried to topple a statue of former president Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square Park, but were stopped by law enforcement.
In San Francisco, protesters defaced and toppled a statue of Ulysses S. Grant, who led the Union Army during the Civil War. Protesters that same night also tore down statues of St. Junipero Serra and Francis Scott Key, who wrote the lyrics to “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
This week McConnell listed the monuments that have been defaced in recent days—noting that in Portland, Ore., a mob “graffitied a statue of our first President, pulled it down, and burned an American flag over his head. This is George Washington.”
McConnell said another Washington statue was defaced in Baltimore, a statue of Thomas Jefferson was ripped down in Portland, and others were targeted.
“This is the general and first President who built our nation, and the author of the Declaration of Independence. Genius statesmen who helped begin this grand experiment that has brought freedom to hundreds of millions and saved the world a few times for good measure,” McConnell said. “And yet a crazy fringe is treating their monuments like vanity statues of tinhorn tyrants.”
He added: “Our Founding Fathers are being roped to the ground like they were Saddam Hussein. The list goes on.”
McConnell was referring to the famous moment in 2003 when a 40-foot bronze statue of the Iraqi dictator was roped and pulled to the ground, symbolizing the end of his regime.
Fox News’ John Roberts, Jake Gibson and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
The country as a whole on Thursday registered another single-day record of more than 39,000 new infections.Hospitalizations are also on the rise, prompting fears that the nationwide death toll could soon follow. The new spikescome as the White House has attempted to play down the increase, explaining it away by pointing to more robust testing capacity and pressing forward with reopening the economy after coming to a standstill for months this spring.
Signs are emerging, however, that the White House has begun to take the threat more seriously, with its coronavirus task force holding its first public briefing since April 27. And hours before he was set to leave for his resort in New Jersey for the weekend, the president abruptly canceled his trip with no explanation. Trump later tweeted that he wanted to stay in Washington to monitor protesters in the city looking to topple its statues.
Later in the day, the Department of Health and Human Services relented to requests from Abbott and the state’s two GOP senators and reversed a plan to cut off federal funding for a handful of coronavirus testing sites in the state at the end of the month.
In Friday’s briefing Vice President Mike Pence said it was “almost inarguable that more testing is generating more cases,” even as he announced plans to travel to three states with the most serious outbreaks. “To one extent or another, the volume of new cases coming in is a reflection of a great success in expanding testing across the country,” Pence argued.
But as the vice president hammered the message that the country — and indirectly, the White House — had made “remarkable progress” in combating the pandemic, other members of the task force acknowledged a more alarming picture.
Health officials in the briefing went on to detail how several states’ case growth is outpacing the number of tests conducted, and the percentage of positive tests has also risen.
“We are facing a serious problem in certain areas,” said Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert. Fauci also implicitly countered Pence and other administration officials, who cast the outbreaks across the South and West as isolated “hot spots.”
“We have a very heterogenous country, but heterogeneity doesn’t mean that we are not intimately interconnected with each other,” Fauci said. “So what goes on in one area of the country, ultimately could have an effect on the other areas of the country.”
Amid the new spikes, Pence announced that he and Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus response, would be traveling to Texas on Sunday, and Arizona and Florida next week “to get a ground report.”Pence had already been scheduled to travel to each state for political events.
The announcement came 24 hours after Abbott first ordered a pause on the state’s reopening process, which began in May. The Texas governor on Thursday also halted elective surgeries in a handful of counties and backed down from an earlier directive that banned cities and counties from mandating residents wear face masks in public.
DeSantis, meanwhile, had indicated that he had no plans to move Florida into its next phase of reopening, while local hot spots weighed their own shutdowns and mask requirements. But the state added nearly 9,000 new cases Thursday, shattering its previous one-day record set only days earlier.
“Effective immediately, the Department of Business and Professional Regulation is suspending on premises consumption of alcohol at bars statewide,” Secretary Halsey Beshears tweeted minutes after the new numbers posted. Establishments can still sell drinks to go.
With their orders Friday, Abbott and DeSantis joined nearly a dozen other states that over the last week or so have begun to scale back reopening due to the new surge. On Thursday Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona, which is among those seeing the highest increase in new infections, announced that the state’s reopening process would also be halted.
California may soon follow suit, with Gov. Gavin Newsom warningthis week that the state is “prepared” to issue another stay-at-home order if necessary, though adding that “We don’t intend to do that. We don’t want to do that.”
On Friday Newsom provided a glimpse at how he might approach the California’s outbreak, announcing that his administration had advised Imperial County, on the state’s southern border with Mexico, “to pull back and once again reinstitute their stay-at-home orders.” While he emphasized the county would be in control of the process the governor wouldn’t rule out intervening.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed, meanwhile, announced that she was delaying the city’s next phase of reopening after infections continued to rise.
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Thursday followed his neighbor Abbott, announcing that he would not be lifting any further coronavirus-related restrictions the same day his state posted one of its largest single-day increases in new cases. Texas’ other neighbor to the east, Louisiana, had already announced a four-week delay before moving into its next phase of reopening.
The governors of Utah, Michigan, Kansas, Idaho, Nevada, North Carolina and Delaware have also taken similar steps to freeze the current phase of reopening.
The last week has seen a significant shift in tone from the leaders of states being battered by the latest outbreaks, from ditching rhetoric pinning the blame for new upticks on increased testing to authorizing cities and localities to impose face mask requirements that they previously opposed.
Officials all over the country have also begun to implore young people, who are making up an increasingly large share of the newest infections, to heed social distancing recommendations, practice good hygiene and wear face masks while out and about.
But for the most part, and until Friday, they’ve roundly dismissed the possibility of ordering another wave of statewide lockdowns or shuttering businesses, stressing the importance of personal responsibility and the desire to avoid economic collapse. Governors have also continued to resist calls for statewide mask requirements, even as they empowered local leaders to impose them.
Hutchinson said Friday he would not be rolling back the reopening process like Texas is, asserting that data in his state didn’t call for it.
“We analyzed you know, whether it is our restaurants, our bars, our barber shops, or any of these that we’ve lifted some restrictions on, contributed to the increase in cases, and we didn’t see a correlation,” he told MSNBC. “So we’re not going to be punishing those businesses that are trying to do the right thing.”
In Texas, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick shut down the prospect of another shelter-in-place order, even as Abbott had urged residents to stay home if they can.
“Going back to a lockdown, that would have to be something catastrophic and we don’t see that in the future,” he told Fox News in an interview Friday.
Abbott said in a statement his decision came after the state exceeded a 10 percent positivity rate for coronavirus tests. The state reported nearly 6,000 new confirmed cases of coronavirus on Thursday, a new daily record.
But the governor noted that his order was meant to narrowly target businesses linked to the new outbreaks.
“At this time, it is clear that the rise in cases is largely driven by certain types of activities, including Texans congregating in bars,” he said, adding that he hoped the new restrictions would be as “limited in duration as possible.”
According to Abbott’s orders, bars must have closed by Friday at noon local time — though they will be allowed to conduct curbside service — and restaurants will be restricted to 50 percent capacity for dine-in service beginning Monday. The order also mandates the closure of rafting and tubing businesses and requires that outdoor gatherings of more than 100 be approved by local governments.
The new shift in approach from governors in affected states comes as local leaders have raised alarms about the worsening outbreak.
In Harris County, the most populous county in Texas and home to Houston and some of its suburbs, County Judge Lina Hidalgo raised the county to the highest Covid-19 threat level, asking residents to stay home.
“Our situation is far worse today than when we issued our first stay-home order in Harris County and when the state issued their first stay-home order,” she said in a news conference Friday, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Hidalgo had ripped the governor’s handling of the outbreak in an interview with POLITICO earlier this week, criticizing the lack of urgency.
“It’s not an outlier or it’s not a blip. It’s something that is headed towards a crisis unless we do something proactively to stop this,” she said Wednesday, arguing that “just flattening the curve may not be enough” to keep hospitals from becoming overwhelmed. “We are already in a high plateau.”
Patrick pushed back on claims that the state is dangerously close to reaching its hospital capacity, asserting there was “misinformation” emanating “even … from hospitals and hospital directors.”
“It’s confused some people. And leadership is about being calm, not panicking, and making the right decisions to protect the life and safety and the health of the population, and also keep our economy afloat and business open the best we can do,” he said.
Before Abbott’s announcement, Austin Mayor Steve Adler pushed for stronger action from the governor.
“The path we’re on right now is the path that right now has us in danger,” he said in an interview on CNN. “We need to do something that’s different than that. We need our people in our community here to act differently. The status quo will not protect us.”
In Arizona, Tucson Mayor Regina Romero also blasted Ducey’s plan to merely pause the state’s reopening, accusing him of moving to reopen the state “way too early” to begin with.
“He says that he wants to take a pause, I don’t know what he wants to pause on. He really went from lifting the stay-at-home and really lifting it and it went from zero to 60 in no time so unless he wants to start pushing back what the restrictions that he lifted, I don’t see what else he needs to pause,” the mayor told CNN.
The vice president rejected that line of thinking in Friday’s task force briefing.
“I think there will be a temptation for people to look at the Sun Belt states that have been reopening and putting people back to work, and suggest that the reopening has to do with what we are seeing in the last week or so,” he acknowledged. But Pence pointed out that many of the states seeing the worst outbreaks began reopening almost two months ago, and again attributed the spike to a feeling of invincibility among younger Americans.
Still, he did not announce any new initiatives, resources or strategies in response to the new outbreaks — and wouldn’t explicitly recommend people wear masks, unlike other members of the task force.
Pence was pressed on the issue by reporters who noted his reluctance to recommend what many officials have called one of the simplest ways to arrest the spread of the virus and a key to a safe reopening, and that wearing a face covering has become a political statement.
The vice president responded that Americans should “listen to their state and local authorities” but brushed off criticism that he and the president, by resuming crowded campaign events with little or no social distancing and masks, were setting a poor example for the rest of the country.
“I think it’s really important that we recognize how important freedom and personal responsibility are to this entire equation,” Pence said, noting that attendees at packed Trump campaign events in Arizona and Oklahoma have chosen to be there. “But allowing younger Americans to understand, particularly in the counties that are most impacted, the unique challenges that we are facing … is important.”
Quint Forgey and Renuka Rayasam contributed to this report.
On Friday, the White House’s coronavirus task force held its first public briefing in nearly two months. The reason for the reappearance is the rapid rise in cases this week across the American South and Southwest, but the task force, which had gone quiet since the Trump administration began its efforts to encourage states to reopen the country, didn’t have much in the way of new guidance to report. Instead, it seemed like an opportunity for task force members Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci to explain the new calamity and convey the continued need for social distancing in some areas.
For the head of the task force, Vice President Mike Pence, and other top Trump administration officials, the purpose of the event seemed to be—per usual—to lather President Donald Trump in praise for his response to a pandemic that has killed more than 120,000 Americans. The coronavirus has reemerged in force amid Trump-encouraged state reopenings even as it has largely subsided in Europe and elsewhere, but according to Pence, that’s nothing to really worry about. Just last week, the vice president published an article in the Wall Street Journal titled “There Isn’t a Coronavirus ‘Second Wave.’ ”
On Friday, Pence also responded to questions about why the Trump campaign staged a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, ignoring its own advice to the American people to listen to local health officials (local health officials in Tulsa denounced the gathering). The vice president’s explanation of this was that “it’s really important to recognize how important freedom and personal responsibility are to this entire equation” and to imply that campaign rallies were part of a larger economic reopening intended in part to protect the mental health of Americans and prevent suicide.
Pence began the event by praising the president for keeping American death totals below the 2.2 million Americans that might have lost their lives had no mitigation efforts been taken, something he has continuously celebrated in spite of the fact that our case and death totals are the highest in the world.
“The president made that decision,” Pence said. “Inarguably, as we see where we are today as a nation, because of what the American people have done, because of the incredible work of our health care workers, because of our partnership with governors in every state, we did just that. We slowed the spread, we flattened the curve, we saved lives.”
Remarkably, Pence then said that it was “nothing short of a national accomplishment” that at the previous height of the pandemic, there were enough ventilators not to leave people dying in waiting rooms without care. This is what you might call a low bar.
Pence did provide some information about the rising cases, noting that the national case count had dipped from 30,000 per day in April to 20,000 per day at the start of this month, but was now back up to a startling 40,000 new cases in a single day this week. He further noted that only 5 percent of new cases are currently resulting in hospitalizations, as opposed to 15 percent two months ago, and celebrated the fact that “this week, there were two days when we lost less than 300 Americans.” (Earlier this month, 2,500 Americans died from COVID-19 in a single day, but more than 200 Americans dying in a single day from this disease is still a horrible tragedy.)
The self-congratulation was not isolated to the vice president. When it was Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar’s turn to speak, he said that “now, thanks to the president and the vice president’s leadership and the hard work of our team, America has never been readier to combat COVID-19.” However, it does not seem like our level of readiness is yet up to snuff, as months into the pandemic American case counts have risen to 10 times those of the European Union. Europe was generally earlier to confront the disease, but also earlier to ramp up per capita testing capacity and, in many countries, more stringent in its lockdown measures. Those efforts now seem to be paying off, as case totals have plummeted and elements of everyday life still absent in the United States, such as sporting events, have already returned.
At the end of the press conference, Pence was asked about the Trump campaign’s Tulsa rally. In addition to his might-prevent-suicides argument, he defended the gathering on constitutional grounds. “The freedom of speech, the right to peaceably assemble is enshrined in the Constitution of the United States, and we have an election coming up this fall,” Pence said. “We still want to give people the freedom to participate in the political process, and we respect that.” He added that, even though they had held the rally, the administration was still asking that “people listen to the leadership in their state and the leadership in their local community and adhere to that guidance” around wearing face coverings and avoiding mass gatherings, and continuing to “to reinforce that message.”
When a reporter asked why the campaign, though, directly ignored the warnings of Tulsa’s top health official Bruce Dart not to hold its rally, Pence again emphasized his First Amendment argument and then seemed to make a bizarre side point: “It’s so important that we recognize that as we issued guidance to reopen America now two months ago and now as all 50 states are opening up our country again, people are going back to work, American everyday life is being restored kind of one step, one day at a time,” Pence said. “There are profound health implications to the lockdowns through which we just passed. I heard a statistic not long ago at a task force briefing that in one jurisdiction there had been a 50 percent increase in the number of people presenting in emergency rooms having attempted suicide.”
Implying major political rallies were needed to help suicide prevention was a strange thing to say as states like Texas and Florida were in the process of shutting bars and restaurants down to address rising case numbers. As for the Tulsa rally, we know that dozens of Secret Service officials and agents who attended the event were ordered to quarantine after two of them tested positive this week. At least eight campaign staff who helped organize the event have also tested positive. The task force is back because cases of the coronavirus are again on the upswing. Let’s see how long it takes Pence to admit that means we can’t go back to everyday American life.
OAKLAND — Florida is shutting down all bars. Texas is doing the same — and imposing a host of new restrictions. Arizona is in a state of crisis as the coronavirus spreads at a new and alarming rate.
But in California, which is shattering single-day records for new Covid-19 cases and watching hospitalizations climb higher by the day,Gov. Gavin Newsom isn’t touching the state’s dimmer switch. At least for now.
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“As long as we’re attacking these issues together and as long as we start to see more and more compliance with our mask mandate, then I think we can move forward more safely and work our way through this without having to toggle back,” Newsom said this week.
The governor, a high-profile Democrat, has avoided specifying what would cause him to shut down certain economic sectors again. But he appears focused on the state’s hospital capacity and has pointed to plenty of bed space as a defense of keeping sectors open.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday closed bars and scaled back restaurant capacity after already halting elective surgeries to preserve hospital bed space. Also on Friday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered bars to be shuttered statewide. Both governors are Republicans who had resisted imposing tough restrictions early in the pandemic.
Newsom on Friday urged hard-hit Imperial County on the southern border, which has the highest prevalence of the disease in the state, to reinstate a full stay-at-home order. But the governor didn’t suggest rolling back any statewide reopening rules.
While California won national praise for its swift lockdown orders early in the pandemic, the state’s progress is evaporating each day. The latest sign: a week of soaring cases would seemingly qualify California for the 14-day quarantine set by New York, New Jersey and Connecticut for travelers coming from states where the disease is rapidly spreading.
With Wednesday’s record-breaking report of 7,149 new cases — a 69 percentincrease from two days earlier — and another 10,239 cases over the next two days, that brings the total case count to 200,461. Meanwhile, the governor reported Thursday that hospitalizations increased 32 percent over the last 14 days, with ICU admissions up 19 percent in that same time period.
“We’ve said all along this is the price we’re going to pay for reopening,” said George Rutherford, an epidemiologist and infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco.
California’s reopening began in May and kicked into high gear earlier this month with a vast array of sector openings including bars, gyms, summer camps, movie theaters, bowling alleys and nail salons. While not all counties have allowed such establishments to open, more sectors are open than closed in most of the state. Newsom has drawn a line against activities that involve congregations in the hundreds, from fan-attended sporting events to conventions.
Newsom has repeatedly cited the state’s preparedness as reason to forge ahead. With just 8 percent of California’s hospital beds occupied, the governor on Wednesday expressed confidence in the state’s “capacity in the short run to meet the needs of those most in need.”
He’s also touted the state’s supply of ventilators and personal protective gear, along with the growing force of workers throughout the state charged with tracking down people who may have been exposed to the virus. As numbers worsened, Newsom this week struck a new tone by appealing to both individual responsibility and a sense of togetherness, all while imploring Californians to “do the right thing” — wear a mask, wash their hands and keep their distance.
Public health experts say it appears California is shifting from high alarm to “harm reduction,” a health strategy that focuses on reducing rather than eliminating the negative consequences typically associated with drug and alcohol use disorder. In this case, it’s increased mobility in the time of a pandemic.
“Now we’re in the land of tradeoffs. Lessening the lockdown is an economic and political necessity, but it’s going to result in more cases,” said Andrew Noymer, associate professor of population health and disease prevention at UC Irvine.
As for what metrics should be used to trigger closures, Newsom relies heavily on what’s called the “positivity rate,” or the percentage of positive cases, which accounts for the state’s increasing tests. California on Wednesday surpassed the World Health Organization’s recommended positivity threshold of less than 5 percent for reopening, logging positive cases of 5.1 percent over two weeks and 5.6 percent over the last week.
Some counties are reporting alarming positivity rates, with Los Angeles County nearing 9 percent, San Bernardino County moving toward 11 percent and Imperial County nearing 23 percent.
But Noymer said he’s still wary of being quick on the trigger to lock back now this summer. He wants to keep that weapon in the arsenal.
“If things get really crazytown in the winter with K-12 starting up again and perhaps galvanizing a resurgent wave of transmission, another lockdown is something we need to keep up our sleeve,” he said.
To Noymer, “things aren’t really bad right now; they’re just not where we want them to be.” Locking down again would be hard, he said, but locking down yet again “is going to be like Chicken Little, ‘the sky is falling.’ People aren’t going to believe it.”
Despite the risks, Noymer acknowledges the status quo can’t persist. “I don’t think we’re better off if we save people from the pandemic, but crush them in other ways,” he said.
UCSF’s Rutherford is worried about certain California counties running out of bed space. The border county of Imperial has already started to exceed hospital capacity, and has sent patients as far north as Stanford University in the Bay Area for care.
The saving grace so far is that death rates statewide haven’t kept pace with skyrocketing case counts, Rutherford said. He attributed that to increased cases among younger people, who are at a lower risk of dying. “But give it two to three weeks to see if the deaths keep up with the cases,” said Rutherford, who says the best thing people can do is wear a mask and avoid mass gatherings.
The state has launched a “watch list” of counties struggling to maintain their Covid-19 outbreaks. The list — now at 15 — includes Santa Clara and Sacramento counties, which had been dropped from the list but are back on due to increased hospitalizations. Stanislaus County is fairly new to the list, and Contra Costa County was just added.
“It seems once business began to reopen and activities began to resume, many people in our county began acting as if everything is going back to normal,” Stanislaus County Supervisor Kristin Olsen said. “Instead of going to a restaurant with their family, they cater a party in their backyard. That has led to our increased numbers.”
Olsen is worried about running out of hospital beds this summer if the case count continues to increase on the current trend. She said 600 of the county’s 1,200 hospital beds can be made available for Covid-19 patients. Capacity remains, but is going fast.
“Within three or four weeks, we could be hitting that 600 figure if those rates continue to increase,” Olsen said.
Being on the state’s watch list means the county has two weeks to try to resolve the issues, Olsen explained. If the county fails to do so, the state could suggest the county consider reinstating some limitations.
While it’s not planning to close any sectors, Stanislaus has delayed the reopening of nail salons, as well as massage, tattoo and piercing services to July 1 even though the state allowed them to open a week ago. The county is also working on the hospital bed capacity and increasing contact tracers.
Newsom has emphasized that counties control their reopening plans and shifted power to local officials, which more closely mirrors the federalism approach taken by President Donald Trump as well as the local control efforts of red-state governors. That stands in contrast to the earliest months of the pandemic when Newsom was calling most of the shots for California’s nearly 40 million residents — which initially won him plaudits for early actions but later drew criticism from weary residents, especially in counties that had few Covid-19 cases.
The decentralization has played out in different ways.
Lassen County halted its reopening plans last month after a surge of cases hit the small, northern county, but resumed after a couple of days. Sonoma County leaders last month kept certain sectors closed and met vocal opposition from the county sheriff, who initially vowed not to enforce the orders until he backed off.
San Francisco on Friday delayed the city’s planned reopening of hair salons, museums and outdoor bars, which was slated for Monday, amid rising case counts.
Grant Colfax, director of San Francisco’s Department of Public Health, couldn’t say when the city would move forward again, but that the next few days and weeks will be crucial. He said hospital capacity in San Francisco remains strong, but was concerned that Thursday’s spike of 103 cases in the city would develop into increased hospitalizations.
“We’re taking a pause here. We’re not reversing. We’re going to have to watch the data,” Colfax said during a press conference Friday.
Some recreational entities have been more cautious around reopening. Yosemite National Park this week reversed course after reopening two weeks ago, extending its campground closures through July 31 due to concerns of increased disease spread. And Disneyland, which hoped to reopen the park by its July 17 anniversary date, has now decided to wait after the state apparently intervened, Newsom suggested Thursday.
Business groups are encouraging Newsom to continue deferring to local governments — and to continue melding public health and economic concerns. They also hope the state will step in to protect them from being held liable under local regulations, and to give them a grace period to implement local rules without fear of being sued.
“We strongly believe our governor and state leaders need to continue to defer to counties and their public health officials for the best and most accurate local health and safety guidelines,” said John Kabateck, state director of the National Federation of Independent Business. “We have been stressing to the governor’s team a strategy that involves a process based on empirical data from the best health and safety experts, combined with sound information from economic development and job creation leaders.”
Carl Guardino, head of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, a nonpartisan public policy organization representing more than 350 companies in the capital of the innovation economy, said the effects of a second shutdown on the state and regional economy would be unfathomable — and devastating.
The costs of a second shutdown in the Silicon Valley — and statewide — would not only be “crippling in different ways on people’s economic health as well as their health in other ways,’’ he said, but would manifest in spousal abuse, child abuse, stress, calls to suicide hotlines and more.
The real message to California at this point must be “we cannot afford to let our guards down,’’ Guardino said.
Carla Marinucci and Debra Kahn contributed to this report.
The European Union will reportedly block most Americans from traveling to the bloc even as those countries reopen to other travelers, a policy that reflects the United States’s failure to fully control the coronavirus pandemic.
The European Union restricted nonessential travel to most of its member-states under rules in effect until at least June 30. But starting July 1, European countries are loosening some of those measures and allowing travel again from more than a dozen countries — including China (if Beijing allows EU travelers too) — that meet certain criteria, including their ability to contain the coronavirus.
Right now, the United States doesn’t make the cut.
The list was backed in principle by most E.U. ambassadors and does not require unanimous support, but still needs to be formalized in member states’ capitals as well as in the central European Union bureaucracy before taking effect July 1. Diplomats did not expect the list to change.
The United States is not alone in being excluded, and travelers from other countries, including Russia, are also barred from visiting.
Still, this is a dramatic decision from some of America’s closest allies, and it has serious implications for trade and travel, especially as both the US and Europe seek to rebuild their economies in the aftermath of the pandemic.
The EU ban should be a wake-up call for the US. But will it be?
Since then, the EU has somewhat regrouped, including with a major pandemic recovery plan. And unified travel rules would also help; though individual EU countries can make their own rules on who can and can’t visit, embracing a consistent policy across member-states would eliminate the need for internal controls as the continent reopens for businesses and tourism.
Travel restrictions will be reevaluated every two weeks based on specific science and epidemiological criteria, according to the New York Times, which first reported on the possibility of a US ban earlier this week.
Even so, the EU extending a ban on American travel is a remarkable development. The expectation in a global pandemic would be to see allies like the US and Europe working together; instead, the coronavirus crisis has shown just how deeply the partnership has deteriorated — and how Trump’s “America First” foreign policy has diminished US standing.
And this will have real consequences for the United States. Business travel to Europe has all but fizzled, and it will be difficult to resume with a ban — which could have consequences as the United States and Europe seek to rebuild their economies. And while Europeans might be enjoying American-tourist-free zones, the decline of international travel has already hit countries like Italy and France quite hard. Travel restrictions could make that recovery even harder. And the US’s spiraling coronavirus outbreak will also hurt US tourism, as Europeans, and pretty much anyone else, will be unlikely to visit, presuming Trump lifts the current travel bans and they’re allowed to.
Trump has embraced travel bans since he took office, which he has justified as a way to defend the country and protect national security. Now, after its embarrassing coronavirus response, the US is on the receiving end, experiencing what it’s like to for everyone else to try to keep Americans out.
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LUBBOCK, Texas (Reuters) – Texas and Florida, at the center of a new U.S. surge in coronavirus infections, on Friday took steps back from efforts to ease restrictions on businesses, ordering bars to close again and tightening rules on restaurants.
Governor Greg Abbott ordered bars across Texas to close by mid-day and required restaurants to limit indoor seating capacity to 50%, while Florida state officials told bars to immediately stop serving alcohol on their premises.
The announcement stunned bar owners who said Abbott, a Republican in his second term as governor, had given them only four hours notice that they had to close at noon. Mark Martinez, owner of a Lubbock beer garden, learned when friends texted him the news at around 8 a.m.
“I spent thousands of dollars in inventory getting ready for this weekend. I could have really used that (money) for my rent, which is due next week,” Martinez said.
Tish Keller, owner of the Triple J chophouse in downtown Lubbock, said Abbott’s order was a brutal blow to her business.
“We were just getting to where we could pay the bills,” she said. “Taking us back down to 50% capacity means we won’t have enough business to pay staff, let alone the bills.”
Keller said she had no idea how long she could stay open under the new rules and dreaded having to try to rescue her business from the brink twice in one year.
Florida on Friday announced a startling 8,942 new cases of COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by coronavirus, eclipsing the state’s one-day record of 5,511 reached on June 24.
Texas had been at the forefront of states peeling away restrictions designed to control the pandemic. It allowed bars to reopen in May, when revelers flouting social distancing rules celebrated Memorial Day weekend.
It has since witnessed some of the biggest increases in new cases in the United States, reporting 5,996 on Thursday. The state has also seen record numbers of hospitalizations in the last two weeks.
Almost 125,000 Americans have died of COVID-19, the highest death toll from the highly infections disease in the world.
Despite the grim news from Texas, Florida and elsewhere, U.S. President Donald Trump said the United states was coming back from the coronavirus crisis, which has halted large parts of the economy and left millions jobless.
“We have a little work to do, and we’ll get it done. We’re having some very good numbers coming out in terms of the comeback, the comeback of our nation, and I think it’s going very rapidly and it’s going to be very good,” he said at an event in the White House.
Vice President Mike Pence said that in Texas and Florida “we’re seeing more and more young people, under the age of 35, who are testing positive. In many cases they have no symptoms.”
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo criticized states that reopened their economies earlier, saying there was “undeniable, irrefutable evidence” those states made a mistake.
Cuomo, a Democrat, told a briefing that states that followed guidance from the White House are now seeing a spike in cases, arguing that New York curbed the outbreak by taking what he called a scientific, rather than a political, approach.
Slideshow (2 Images)
“What’s going on in this country is now frightening and revealing at the same time,” Cuomo said. “I say it is time to wake up, America, and look at the undeniable facts.”
Also reporting record rises in cases this week were Alabama, Arizona, California, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Wyoming.
Reporting by Brad Brooks, Jonathan Allen, Nathan Layne and Peter Szekely; Writing by Alistair Bell and Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien and Daniel Wallis
Florida has banned drinking at bars again in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus after the state reported 8,942 new cases on Friday, shattering the record single-day spike of 5,508 reported on Wednesday.
The coronavirus has now infected 122,960 people in Florida and killed at least 3,327 people, according to the state’s health department.
The latest spike comes amid a surge in many states, mostly across the South and West, that has prompted some officials to delay and even roll back reopening efforts. Cases have been rising by the thousands in Florida in recent days.
Halsey Beshears, the secretary of the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, announced on Twitter Friday that the state is ending onsite consumption at bars. Gov. Ron DeSantis allowed bars to reopen with modifications in early June after keeping them closed for two months.
“Effective immediately, the Department of Business and Professional Regulation is suspending on premises consumption of alcohol at bars statewide,” Beshears tweeted. When reached for comment by CNBC, DeSantis’ office confirmed the decision.
When asked on Thursday about Florida’s reopening, DeSantis said the state doesn’t have plans for continuing its step-by-step reopening. He added that the state “never anticipated” to continue moving forward at this point.
“We are where we are. I didn’t say we were going to go on to the next phase,” the Republican governor said.
His comments come shortly after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced he would pause reopening plans for his state as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations continue to climb. On Friday, Abbott rolled back some of the state’s reopening plans.
Florida was averaging 4,013 daily new cases as of Thursday, which is about a 67% increase compared with the seven-day average one week ago, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. DeSantis has allowed retailers, restaurants, gyms and personal care services to reopen at reduced capacity.
Florida was among the first states to reopen, with DeSantis allowing most restaurants and stores to open with limited capacity on May 4. Heavily populated Miami-Dade and Broward counties did not reopen until May 18. On June 5, most of the state moved deeper into reopening, allowing more stores to resume operations as well as for gyms and some stores to operate at full capacity.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced Friday that he will roll back some of the state’s reopening as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations continue to rise.
“As I said from the start, if the positivity rate rose above 10%, the State of Texas would take further action to mitigate the spread of COVID-19,” Abbott said in a press release. “At this time, it is clear that the rise in cases is largely driven by certain types of activities, including Texans congregating in bars.”
The order includes the following:
All bars and similar establishments that receive more than 51% of their gross receipts from the sale of alcoholic beverages are required to close at 12:00 p.m. Friday. These businesses may remain open for delivery and takeout, including for alcoholic beverages, as authorized by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission.
Restaurants may remain open for dine-in service, but at a capacity not to exceed 50% of total listed indoor occupancy, beginning Monday.
Rafting and tubing businesses must close.
Outdoor gatherings of 100 or more people must be approved by local governments, with certain exceptions.
Abbott’s order comes only a day after he said he would place the state’s reopening plan on pause. On Thursday, he ordered all licensed hospitals in four counties that include the state’s largest cities — Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Austin — to postpone elective procedures in order to protect hospital capacity for Covid-19 patients.
“The last thing we want to do as a state is go backwards and close down businesses,” Abbott said in a release Thursday.
Texas reported a 79% increase in its weekly average of coronavirus cases on Thursday, averaging 4,757 daily new cases, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
The United States recorded the largest single-day increase in new coronavirus cases Thursday, as the nationwide death toll approaches 125,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Cases rose across the country by at least 39,818 on Thursday, breaking the previous record of 36,426 set on April 24. The country also totaled 124,415 COVID-19-related deaths, and more than 2.4 million cases nationwide by Friday morning, the data shows.
More than 36,000 new cases were recorded on Wednesday as the country inched toward yesterday’s record.
Texas, Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wyoming have all seen record rises in cases this week.
Those states were either spared the brunt of the initial outbreak, or moved early to lift restrictions on residents and businesses.
A traveler walks past screeners testing a system of thermal imaging cameras which check body temperatures at Los Angeles International Airport.Getty Images
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott temporarily halted the state’s reopening on Thursday amid an uptick in COVID-19 infections.
“This temporary pause will help our state corral the spread until we can safely enter the next phase of opening our state for business,” Governor Greg Abbott, a two-term Republican, said in a statement.
Abbott also issued an executive order directing hospitals in four hard-hit counties to suspend elective surgeries, calling it a “precautionary step” to guarantee an “ample supply of available beds to treat COVID-19 patients.”
The Lone Star State’s biggest cities — Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Austin — are all located in the counties covered by the order.
While the nationwide surge can be partly attributed to more testing, the percentage of positive results is also on the rise.
Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday that as many as 10 times more Americans may be infected with coronavirus than earlier estimates suggested — which means as many as 20 million may have contracted the virus, but also that the mortality rate may be lower than thought.
Globally, more than 9.6 million people have been infected with the contagion.
Brazil is the second-most affected country with more than 1.2 million cases and nearly 55,000 deaths.
With Post wires
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