The latest on the coronavirus pandemic around the U.S. and the world.

PHOENIX — When the coronavirus flared in China this week, the country canceled flights, suspended reopenings and described the situation as “extremely grave.” But with cases rising in some U.S. states, local officials have balked at even requiring people to wear masks.

In the United States, which has the most confirmed cases and deaths in the world, authorities wrestled Wednesday with balancing demands for constitutional rights and personal freedom with warnings from health officials that being lax will have deadly consequences.

China responded to a new outbreak in Beijing by scrapping more than 60 percent of its flights to the capital, canceling classes and strengthening requirements for social distancing. It was a sharp retreat for the nation that declared victory over COVID-19 in March.

“This has truly rung an alarm bell for us,” Party Secretary Cai Qi told a meeting of Beijing’s Communist Party Standing Committee.

China’s actions follow about 137 new cases, a fraction of the number some U.S. states see each day. In Arizona, more than 1,100 people visited emergency rooms on Tuesday alone with positive or suspected cases. Alabama also is running out of hospital space, stirring impassioned debate over a mask requirement. Other states that haven’t mandated face coverings, like Texas and Florida, are seeing infections soar.

With masks becoming a political symbol, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has taken aim at President Trump’s approach to the pandemic.

Read the full story about the debate over face masks here.

Beijing reports decline in new cases as it presses stricter containment measures

BEIJING — China’s capital has reported a decline in newly confirmed coronavirus cases as the city continues to press stricter measures to contain a new outbreak.

Beijing reported 21 cases Thursday, down from 31 a day earlier.

Officials reported 28 new cases in all nationwide. Of the cases outside Beijing, four were brought by Chinese travelers from outside the country and three were reported in the city of Tianjin and Hebei province, both of which border Beijing.

No new deaths were reported, leaving the total number of fatalities at 4,634.

Beijing this week moved to suspend classes and restrict tourism and travel in and out of the city to stem any further spread in the latest outbreak traced to the city’s largest wholesale market.

Masks credited with preventing coronavirus spread inside Missouri hair salon

Clay Goddard wasn’t religious about wearing a face mask in public, despite being the director of the health department in Springfield, Mo., and the head of the region’s response to COVID-19. He doubted a face covering – even his favorite Kansas City Chiefs-pattern mask – offered much protection.

“You’d probably have better luck stopping the wind,” Goddard said.

Few people wore face masks in Springfield, health officials said. The risk from the virus seemed low, with relatively few cases in the city of 170,000. And just wearing a face mask had become, to some, like carrying a political yard sign – especially in a conservative corner of a state that President Donald Trump, who has refused to wear a mask, won easily in 2016. Republican state lawmakers, too, have made a show of going mask-less.

But then a hair stylist in Springfield was diagnosed with COVID-19 in late May, directly exposing 84 customers who had sat just inches from her face for up to 30 minutes each.

And Goddard would end up changing his thinking about masks.

The result appears to be one of the clearest real-world examples of the ability of masks to slow the spread of COVID-19. It also highlights the challenges for public health officials around the world who at times have sounded ambivalent about masks as they are still trying to understand the threat from this new virus. Several new medical studies have shown support recently for the idea that masks work, yet going without a mask for some people can still seem like a badge of honor.

The sick hair stylist had worked eight shifts over nine days at a Great Clips on the city’s main commercial strip, despite showing symptoms, according to health officials.

The next day, a second stylist at the same Great Clips tested positive. She’d worked on 56 clients.

The city faced a potentially huge outbreak, just two weeks after reopening barber shops and salons.

“Alarm bells went off,” Goddard said.

But then there were the face masks.

Read the full story.

‘COVID baby bust’ could lead to half a million fewer births next year

In a new report, economists writing for the Brookings Institution estimate that the United States could see “on the order of 300,000 to 500,000 fewer births next year” as a result of the economic recession triggered by the novel coronavirus.

The economists, Melissa S. Kearney and Phillip Levine, derive their estimates from data on birth rates during the Great Recession and the 1918 flu pandemic. Both of those upheavals had a considerable negative impact on fertility.

During the Great Recession, for instance, states that experienced steeper job losses tended to see more dramatic reductions in their birth rates between 2008 and 2011. Looking at the country as a whole, they found that “in 2007, the birth rate was 69.1 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44; in 2012, the rate was 63.0 births per 1,000 women.” That works out to a 9%drop, or roughly 400,000 fewer births.

The reason? Children are expensive, and having a child is in many ways a financial decision. The loss of a job or otherwise uncertain prospects for a steady income lead many would-be parents to postpone having kids until things are more settled. In economic jargon, birth rates are “procyclical” – they tend to rise during times of economic growth and fall during recessions.

Birth rates also track pandemics, as the fertility data from the time of the 1918 pandemic show. Crucially, in the wake of the 1918 pandemic, American mothers didn’t “make up” for the previous decline in fertility by having more kids. Rather, the pandemic left a permanent mark on American families, with many having fewer children than they would have otherwise, leaving tens of thousands of future American citizens permanently unborn.

What does all that mean for the current crisis, which involves not just a pandemic or an economic collapse, but both simultaneously? Using the skyrocketing unemployment rate as a baseline and factoring in the additional effect of an ongoing public health crisis with no end in sight, Kearney and Levine estimate we’re in for a decline of anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000 births.

16 friends say they were infected with the virus after a night partying in a Florida bar

A night of partying on the weekend that bars in Florida reopened resulted in a group of 16 friends becoming infected with the novel coronavirus and regretting the decision to go out, they said.

On June 6, Erika Crisp and her friends visited a crowded Lynch’s Irish Pub in Jacksonville Beach to celebrate a friend’s birthday. The pub was packed with other celebrators who weren’t wearing masks, she told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on “Cuomo Prime Time” on Tuesday.

“At the time it was more out of sight out of mind. We hadn’t known anybody who had it personally. Governor, mayor, everybody says it’s fine,” she said, adding that her friends showed symptoms within days of the outing. “It was a mistake. I feel foolish. It’s too soon.”

One of her friends from that night, Kat Layton, who lost her sense of smell, said she knew she and her friends “were pushing it” by being out that night. She warned viewers that the current state of the pandemic is not ready for such gatherings and that the coronavirus is still very much present.

About seven employees at the pub also tested positive for the virus after the owner had them tested out of precaution, CBS Miami reported. Those employees also worked the night Crisp, Layton and her friends went out, but the owner told the station he thinks a customer brought in the virus.

The bar closed for deep cleaning but reopened Tuesday night, WJXT reported. Other nightlife establishments in the area recently reclosed for cleaning after dozens of people claimed to be infected with the virus after going out.

Florida’s coronavirus cases have set new daily records over the past few days. More than 2,700 cases were reported Tuesday.

The ultimate COVID-19 mystery: Why does it spare some and kill others?

The novel coronavirus can be a killer — or no big deal. It can put a person in the intensive care unit on a ventilator, isolated from family, facing a lonely death — or it can come and go without leaving a mark, a ghost pathogen, more rumor than reality.

Six months into a pandemic that has killed more than 400,000 people globally, scientists are still trying to understand the wildly variable nature of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.

Among their lines of inquiry: Are distinct strains of the coronavirus more dangerous? Does a patient’s blood type affect the severity of the illness? Do other genetic factors play a role? Are some people partially protected from COVID-19 because they’ve had recent exposure to other coronaviruses?

Much of the research remains provisional or ambiguous, and for now scientists can’t do much better than say that COVID-19 is more likely to be worse for older people — often described as over the age of 60 — and for those with chronic conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, lung disease and heart disease.

That describes tens of millions of people in the United States alone. It also isn’t much of an explanation: The link between chronic disease and the severity of COVID-19 is more in the category of correlation than causation. The “why” of the matter remains unclear.

Read the full story.

Special disinfection tunnel installed for Putin

MOSCOW — A special disinfection tunnel has been installed in the residence of Russian President Vladimir Putin outside Moscow and two more in the Kremlin, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed to The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Reports about the tunnel spraying anyone passing through it with disinfectants appeared in Russian state media on Tuesday night. RIA Novosti news agency reported that the tunnel was manufactured by a Russian company based in Penza, some 550 kilometers (340 miles) southeast of Moscow.

В резиденции Путина для защиты от коронавируса установили специальный туннель. Он предназначен для дезинфекцииhttps://t.co/jjwWbuZ2EX pic.twitter.com/h62KWARvsr

— РИА Новости (@rianru) June 16, 2020

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