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

SAN FRANCISCO — Health officials in a San Francisco Bay Area county that was among the most aggressive in the nation in shutting down its economy to slow the spread of the coronavirus are warning of “worrisome” growing infections as California on Tuesday reported its highest daily infection rate to date and hospitalizations from the virus increase.

The state Department of Public Health recorded more than 5,000 new cases Tuesday, putting the total number of positive cases at more than 183,000. The state has seen more than 5,500 deaths related to COVID-19.

The record-setting numbers and warnings come as more businesses reopen statewide, spurred by antsy residents weary over stay-at-home and social distancing orders. San Francisco, which was part of the Bay Area’s strict order in mid-March, plans to allow outdoor bars, nail and hair salons and tattoo shops to open next week.

Health officers say they always expected case numbers to creep up as the economy reopens, but they worry the trend may be getting out of hand.

“The question of how we’re doing as a nation is: We’re not doing so well. How are we doing as a state? Not doing so well. How are we doing as a region? Not doing so well,” said Santa Clara County Executive Jeffrey Smith Tuesday. Smith, a doctor, said one widely cited model projects 15,000 Californians could die by Oct. 1.

Santa Clara County, home to Silicon Valley, has recorded the earliest known coronavirus-related death in the country in February and served as an early virus hot spot. The stay-home order flattened the curve of new infections, said Dr. Sara Cody, the county’s public health officer, but “worrisome” signs indicate the increase is accelerating.

Read the full story on the surge in California here.

UN chief criticizes lack of global cooperation on COVID-19

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations chief criticized the total lack of international coordination in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic on Tuesday and warned that the go-it-alone policy of many countries will not defeat the coronavirus.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in an interview with the Associated Press that what needs to be done is to make countries understand that by acting in isolation “they are creating the situation that is getting out of control” — and that global coordination is key.

COVID-19 started in China, moved to Europe, then to North America and now to South America, Africa and India, he said, and some people are now talking about second waves coming at any moment.

Yet, he said, “there is total lack of coordination among countries in the response to the COVID.”

Guterres said it’s important to use that fact “to make countries understand that bringing them together, putting together their capacities, not only in fighting the pandemic in a coordinated way but in working together to have the treatments, testing mechanisms, the vaccines … accessible to everybody, that this is the way we defeat the pandemic.”

The secretary-general said coordinating political, economic and social responses to the fallout from COVID-19 including job losses, increasing violence and human rights being violated will also help mitigate the impact of the pandemic.

From the start of the pandemic, Guterres has been trying to mobilize international action to address what he says is the biggest international challenge since World War II.

“I am frustrated, of course, with the lack of international cooperation at the present moment,” Guterres said, “but I hope that the new generations will be able to make things change in the future.”

The secretary-general didn’t single out any countries, but U.S. President Donald Trump halted all funding to the World Health Organization, accusing the U.N. agency leading the fight against the pandemic of failing to respond to the coronavirus because China has “total control” over it.

Trump has pushed for the U.S. economy to reopen as COVID-19 cases continue to rise in many American states. About 2.3 million Americans have been infected by the virus and some 120,000 have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Texas surpasses 5,000 new daily virus cases for the first time

AUSTIN, Texas — Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said Tuesday that Texas has surpassed 5,000 new coronavirus cases in a single day for the first time, another troubling milestone as the largest pediatric hospital in the U.S. begins taking adult patients to free up bed space in Houston.

The announcement comes days after Texas eclipsed 4,000 new cases for the first time just last weekend. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, told lawmakers in Washington on Tuesday that “the next couple weeks are going to be critical” in Texas and other states that are trying to curtail an alarming spike in new cases.

“There remain a lot of people in the state of Texas who think that the spread of COVID-19 is not a challenge,” Abbott told Bryan television station KBTX. “The coronavirus is serious. It’s spreading.”

Abbott on Monday underscored that the infection rate in Texas has doubled since late May to nearly 9 percent and that the state reached an 11th consecutive day of record COVID-19 hospitalizations with more than 3,700.

Abbott is now emphasizing face covering more strenuously than at any point he has during the pandemic. He has not taken new actions that many Democrats have called for — including making face covering mandatory — but hinted Tuesday that new measures could be coming.

Abbott has stressed that Texas still has plenty of hospital beds, but some of the state’s largest medical centers are starting to carve out new spaces to manage rising caseloads. Texas Children’s Hospital, the largest pediatric hospital in the United States, said Tuesday it was admitting adult patients across its campuses to free up more hospital bed space in the Houston area.

The number of COVID-19-positive hospital patients in Harris County, which encompasses Houston, has nearly tripled since May 31.

“Our power on the local level was stripped away and we started opening up,” Mayor Sylvester Turner said Monday. “I said two months ago I thought we were moving too quickly, too fast, and now we find ourselves where we are today.”

In another development, the Texas Juvenile Justice Department said late Monday that a youth at the Giddings State School tested positive for COVID-19, marking the first confirmed case of the virus at a Texas juvenile detention facility.

University of Michigan declines to host presidential debate due to virus concerns

WASHINGTON — The nonpartisan commission that sponsors the formal election year presidential debates announced Tuesday that an October debate that had been set for Michigan will now take place in Florida.

The change comes after the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, determined it was no longer “feasible” to host the Oct. 15 debate, the Commission on Presidential Debates said.

The debate will instead be held at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County in Miami.

Read the rest of the story here.

Tennis star Novak Djokovic tests positive for coronavirus

BELGRADE, Serbia — Novak Djokovic tested positive for the coronavirus on Tuesday after taking part in a tennis exhibition series he organized in Serbia and Croatia.

The top-ranked Serb is the fourth player to test positive for the virus after playing last week in Belgrade and last weekend in Zadar, Croatia. His wife also tested positive.

“The moment we arrived in Belgrade we went to be tested. My result is positive, just as Jelena’s, while the results of our children are negative,” Djokovic said in a statement.

Djokovic has been criticized for organizing the tournament and bringing in players from other countries.

Read the rest of the story here.

Fauci to testify at a fraught time for U.S. pandemic response

WASHINGTON — With coronavirus cases rising in about half the states and political polarization competing for attention with public health recommendations, Dr. Anthony Fauci returns to Capitol Hill on Tuesday at a fraught moment in the nation’s pandemic response.

The government’s top infectious disease expert will testify before a House committee, along with the heads of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and a top official at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Since Fauci’s last appearance at a high-profile hearing more than a month ago, the U.S. is emerging from weeks of stay-at-home orders and business shutdowns. But it’s being done in an uneven way, with some states far less cautious than others. A trio of states with Republican governors who are bullish on reopening — Arizona, Florida and Texas — are among those seeing worrisome increases in cases.

Last week, Vice President Mike Pence published an opinion article in The Wall Street Journal saying the administration’s efforts have strengthened the nation’s ability to counter the virus and should be “a cause for celebration.”

Then President Trump said at his weekend rally in Tulsa that he had asked administration officials to slow down testing, because too many positive cases are turning up. Many rally goers did not wear masks, and for some that was an act of defiance against what they see as government intrusion. White House officials later tried to walk back Trump’s comment on testing, suggesting it wasn’t meant to be taken literally.

Fauci has recently warned that the U.S. is still in the first wave of the pandemic and has continued to urge the American public to practice social distancing. And, in a recent ABC News interview, he said political demonstrations such as protests against racial injustice are “risky” to all involved. Asked if that applied to Trump rallies, he said it did. Fauci continues to recognize widespread testing as critical for catching clusters of COVID-19 cases before they turn into full outbreaks in a given community.

Read the full story here.

After union balks, Major League Baseball makes its own plan for 60-game schedule

NEW YORK — Major League Baseball plans to unilaterally issue a 60-game schedule for its shortest season since 1878 after the players’ association rejected a negotiated deal of the same length, putting the sport on track for a combative and possibly unhappy return to the field amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Six days after baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred and union head Tony Clark negotiated to expand the playoffs from 10 teams to 16, widen use of the designated hitter to National League games and introduce an experiment to start extra innings with a runner on second base, the deal was rejected by the Major League Baseball Players Association’s executive board in a 33-5 vote.

“Needless to say, we are disappointed by this development,” MLB said in a statement. “The framework provided an opportunity for MLB and its players to work together to confront the difficulties and challenges presented by the pandemic. It gave our fans the chance to see an exciting new postseason format. And, it offered players significant benefits.”

MLB’s control owners approved going unilaterally with the 60-game schedule if the final arrangements can be put in place, a person familiar with the decision told The Associated Press. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because no announcement was made.

MLB asked the union to respond by 5 p.m. EDT Tuesday as to whether players can report to training and whether the players’ association will agree on the operating manual of health and safety protocols. The schedule would be the shortest since the National League’s third season.

The union announced its rejection, and the vote total was confirmed by a person familiar with that meeting who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because the balloting was not made public. The decision likely will provoke what figures to be lengthy and costly litigation over the impact of the coronavirus on the sport, similar to the collusion cases that sent baseball spiraling to a a spring training lockout in 1990 and a 7 1/2-month strike in 1994-95 that wiped out the World Series for the first time in nine decades.

Read the full story on the baseball season here.

Rising virus numbers in Texas don’t slow its reopening

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas’ surging coronavirus numbers are not slowing down the state’s reopening.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday instead prescribed a renewed emphasis on face coverings to curtail sobering trends, including hospitalization rates that have more than doubled over the past month. Monday marked the 11th consecutive day Texas set a new high for COVID-19 hospitalizations.

Abbott didn’t rule out reimposing lockdown orders but described it as a last resort. He says the virus is spreading at an “unacceptable rate” in Texas but stopped short of mandating face masks in public.

Big cities in Texas have begun mandating that businesses require customers to wear masks, including Houston, where the order went into effect Monday.

Surge in U.S. virus cases raises fear that progress is slipping

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Coronavirus cases in Florida surpassed 100,000 on Monday, part of an alarming surge across the South and West as states reopen for business and many Americans resist wearing masks or keeping their distance from others.

The disturbing signs in the Sunshine State as well as places like Arizona, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas and South Carolina — along with countries such as Brazil, India and Pakistan — are raising fears that the progress won after months of lockdowns is slipping away.

“It is snowballing. We will most certainly see more people die as a result of this spike,” said Dr. Marc Boom, CEO and president of Houston Methodist Hospital, noting that the number of COVID-19 hospital admissions has tripled since Memorial Day to more then 1,400 across eight hospital systems in the Houston metropolitan area.

He predicted that in three weeks hospitals could be overwhelmed, and he pleaded with people to cover their faces and practice social distancing.

“It is possible to open up at a judicious pace and coexist with the virus, but it requires millions and millions of people to do the right thing. Right now, we don’t have that” because people have let their guard down, Boom said.

The number of newly confirmed coronavirus cases across the country per day has reached more than 26,000, up from about 21,000 two weeks ago, according to an Associated Press analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The analysis looked at a seven-day rolling average through Sunday.

Over 120,000 deaths in the U.S. have been blamed on the virus.

Read the full story here.

White House relaxes its own virus screening as D.C. hits phase two

The White House is cutting back on screening visitors for the coronavirus as President Donald Trump pushes to reopen the country.

“In conjunction with Washington, D.C., entering Phase Two today, the White House is scaling back complex-wide temperature checks,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement on Monday.

The White House had been conducting temperature checks in a makeshift medical tent at the press entrance since March. The tent was gone on Monday, as Washington entered its second phase of reopening, allowing the businesses such as restaurants and gyms to open under limited conditions.

“In addition to social distancing, hand sanitizer, regular deep cleaning of all work spaces, and voluntary facial coverings, every staff member and guest in close proximity to the president and vice president is still being temperature checked, asked symptom histories, and tested for COVID-19,” Deere said.

A notice posted in the briefing room lists symptoms of the virus and recommends social distancing.

On Saturday, Trump held his first rally since the pandemic began, drawing a crowd in Tulsa, Oklahoma, far smaller than he and his camaign had touted. Health experts had warned that a large indoor rally would fuel the virus’s spread in Oklahoma.

The U.S. reported 33,894 new cases on Saturday, its highest total since May 1. About 120,000 people have died from the virus in the U.S.

Germany works to tame meatpacking outbreak

MOSCOW — Restaurants, gyms, swimming pools, libraries and kindergartens resume operation in Moscow on Tuesday as the city emerges from a tight coronavirus lockdown in place since late March.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced ending the lockdown in the Russian capital two weeks ago.

Sobyanin lifted stay-at-home orders and allowed beauty parlors to reopen first. Last week, dental clinics, museums and outdoor spaces of cafes and restaurants resumed operation.

Over the past few weeks, the officially reported daily number of new coronavirus infections in Moscow has dropped from more than 2,000 to about 1,000. On Tuesday, health officials in the city reported 1,081 new infections.

In total, Moscow has so far registered 216,095 confirmed coronavirus cases, 36% of Russia’s caseload of over 599,000 contagions.

The decision to lift the lockdown in Moscow while the infection rate remains that high has been widely criticized as politically motivated and linked to the upcoming vote on a constitutional reform that would allow President Vladimir Putin to remain in power until 2036.

Visitors flock to see panda in Tokyo after zoo reopens

TOKYO — Hundreds of visitors rushed to see a popular panda cub Xiang Xiang as Tokyo’s Ueno zoo reopened Tuesday for the first time since February when it closed due to the coronavirus.

An avid Xiang Xiang fan, Masumi Tsunoda, who used to visit the zoo every week to see the panda, showed up Tuesday with her handmade mask with panda prints for the occasion. “I was so happy to see Xiang Xiang got so much bigger,” she said.

Xiang Xiang is due to return to China later this year under panda exchange protocols.

Entry to the zoo is limited to 4,000 visitors per day who must book tickets in advance.

The zoo said the coronavirus shutdown was the longest closure in the facility’s history since it opened in 1882.

German official says relaxation of rules leading to rise in cases in U.S.

BERLIN — The head of Germany’s disease control center says a relaxation of distancing rules in parts of the United States is to blame for the rise in cases there.

Lothar Wieler, head of the Robert Koch Institute, noted Tuesday that case numbers in southern U.S. states have risen markedly.

“The reasons for this are a loosening of distancing rules despite the case numbers not having fallen there yet,” he said.

Germany has seen an increase in COVID-19 infections in recent days, too, linked to outbreaks at a slaughterhouse and apartment buildings.

Germany’s Lufthansa, meanwhile, says it will resume flights to Shanghai on Wednesday, offering its first regular scheduled flights to mainland China since the end of January.

Lufthansa said Tuesday that for now the flights will operate once a week.

South Africa tops 100,000 cases

JOHANNESBURG — South Africa’s coronavirus cases have surpassed 100,000 as the country makes up close to one-third of all recorded infections on the African continent.

The latest daily update shows a worrying new trend as Gauteng province, home to South Africa’s economic hub of Johannesburg, has a higher number of new cases than the hotspot of Western Cape province centered on the city of Cape Town.

Virus cases in Gauteng, which also contains the capital, Pretoria, now make up more than one-fifth of South Africa’s total.

South Africa continues to loosen its lockdown despite the rise in cases because of economic pressure, with casinos and beauty parlors the latest businesses allowed to open.

Africa overall has more than 315,000 cases including more than 8,000 deaths. The true number of cases remains unknown because of the low level of testing on the continent due to a shortage of materials.

South Korea works to contain outbreak on Russian ship in its port

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea says it’s testing 176 workers at the southern port of Busan following a coronavirus outbreak among crew members of a Russian cargo ship that has so far sickened 16.

Kwon Jun-wook, director of South Korea’s National Institute of Health, said Tuesday that all 21 crew members were tested after the ship arrived at Busan’s Gamcheon Port on Sunday carrying frozen seafood.

He said the ship’s captain failed to properly inform port authorities that three of the crewmembers had high fever. The 176 people being tested included cargo handlers, customs officials, repair workers and interpreters who made contact with the infected crew members. Port officials and workers earlier on Tuesday agreed to halt unloading cargo from the ship and another Russian ship at the port.

South Korea reported 46 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, including 30 linked to international arrivals. The country has been struggling to stem a resurgence of the virus in the Seoul metropolitan area, where hundreds of infections have been linked to entertainment and leisure activities, church gatherings and sales and warehouse jobs.

China reports 22 new cases — 13 in Beijing

BEIJING — China has reported 22 new cases of coronavirus, including 13 in Beijing, a day after a city government spokesperson said containment measures had slowed the momentum of a new outbreak in the capital that has infected more than 200 people.

Another nine cases were brought by Chinese travelers from outside the country, seven of them on board a flight from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia that arrived in the western city of Lanzhou, capital of Gansu province, according to a notice from the provincial government.

China has reported 4,634 deaths from the virus among 83,418 total cases since it was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.

While the situation in Beijing is headed in the right direction, “the prevention situation remains grave and complex,” city spokesperson Xu Hejian said at a Monday news conference.

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