With tax revenues plummeting, states could face a cumulative budget gap of $555 billion through the 2022 fiscal year, according to one estimate.
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New York has seen less than 1 percent of all coronavirus tests return positive for seven straight days, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said, adding, “We have to protect the progress.” He announced that low-risk cultural activities in New York City, including museums, could reopen starting on Aug. 24.
Medical workers performing an antibody test in San Dimas, Calif., last month.Credit…Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
If you recover from the virus, you’re protected for up to three months, the C.D.C. says.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated their guidance recently to suggest that people who have recovered from the virus can safely mingle with others for three months.
It was a remarkable addition to the body of guidance from the agency, and the first acknowledgment that immunity to the virus may persist for at least three months.
In June, a study found that antibody levels could wane over a course of two to three months in people with confirmed infections who experienced mild symptoms or no symptoms. They drop off, but they may still be present at low levels, including below the limit of detection.
The latest C.D.C. guidance — which was tucked into public recommendations about who needs to quarantine — goes a bit further. Advertisement
“People who have tested positive for Covid-19 do not need to quarantine or get tested again for up to three months as long as they do not develop symptoms again,” the guidance says. “People who develop symptoms again within three months of their first bout of Covid-19 may need to be tested again if there is no other cause identified for their symptoms.”
Other coronaviruses, including those that cause SARS and MERS, have antibodies that scientists believe last about a year. In the early days of the virus’s spread in the United States, scientists had hoped antibodies to the new virus would last at least that long.
A study published in May found that people who recovered from the infection could return to work safely, but it was still unclear how long they might be protected.
Doctors have reported some cases of people who seemed to be infected a second time after recovery, but experts have said those are more likely to represent a re-emergence of symptoms from the initial bout.
Long-term financial damage to states may be greater than that of the last recession, economists say.
The Fed chairman, Jerome H. Powell, shown at a hearing in June, has repeatedly warned that reductions of state jobs could drag down an economic recovery.Credit…Pool photo by Tasos Katopodis
The Senate formally adjourned on Thursday until early September, leaving undone any package of pandemic relief. House members had already left Washington.
Democrats and the Trump administration remain far apart on the stimulus, including how much to spend and where the money would go. The House, which is controlled by Democrats, passed a $3 trillion dollar aid package in May. Republicans, who control the Senate, want to stay in the $1 trillion range.
A major sticking point, aside from how much more to help unemployed Americans, was providing more aid to state and local governments. With tax revenues plummeting, states could face a cumulative budget gap of at least $555 billion through the 2022 fiscal year, according to one estimate. Economists warn that, unless Congress intervenes, the long-term financial damage might be greater than after the recession of 2007-9.
President Trump and top Republicans warn that providing more money to states could simply bail out fiscally irresponsible governments that did not manage their budgets and their public pension plans prudently in good times.
Democrats insist that states need more money and have proposed as much as $1 trillion, saying it would support needed services and help the economy recover more quickly.
Nearly all states are required to balance their budgets, meaning officials will need to plug shortfalls by tapping rainy-day funds, raising taxes or cutting costs, including by eliminating jobs. That worries economists and Federal Reserve officials. Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chairman, regularly warns that state job cuts could hurt the economy’s ability to recover, and his colleagues say that public-sector budget trouble is one of the country’s primary vulnerabilities.
“It will hold back the economic recovery if they continue to lay people off and if they continue to cut essential services,” Mr. Powell said during congressional testimony in June. “In fact, that’s kind of what happened post the global financial crisis.”
With unemployment high and many businesses expected to close, states are bracing for more safety net costs on top of the public health expenses they are already incurring. They spend a large chunk of their budgets on Medicaid payments and services for low-income residents.
Yet the Trump administration and many Republican lawmakers have largely brushed off state financial woes, insisting that governors and other local leaders foot part of the pandemic aid bill and refusing to “bail out” Democratic-led states struggling with huge shortfalls in their public pension plans.
U.S. retail sales rose 1.2 percent in July, returning to pre-pandemic levels.
Shoppers in Manhattan last month.Credit…Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
Even as coronavirus infections continued to spread, in-person school re-openings were scrapped and unemployment stayed near historic levels, Americans kept shopping in July, with retail sales rising 1.2 percent from June, reflecting a rare bright spot in the battered economy. The jump in sales reported on Friday by the Commerce Department, though smaller than the increases in the previous two months, showed that the bounce back in spending to pre-pandemic levels was not a fluke. Sales are now back at the level they were in February. It was instead a sign that consumerism, buoyed by government support, remains resilient even as many other facets of American life are increasingly bleak.
“It shows there is a willingness and a desire to spend,” said Michelle Meyer, chief U.S. economist at Bank of America. “There is no doubt the recovery in consumer spending has been robust.”
Retail sales in June rose 8.4 percent. That followed a May jump, 18.2 percent, which was the largest monthly surge on record. But that had followed two months of record declines.
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- The United States reported at least 1,470 deaths from the coronavirus on Wednesday, the highest single-day total yet in August.
- New unemployment claims fell below one million last week for the first time since March, but layoffs remain exceptionally high and rehiring has slowed.
Some of the recovery has been helped by the $600 a week in unemployment assistance, which expired at the end of July. If Congress fails to extend the emergency benefit, it could derail the retail rebound in coming months. And there are certain sectors of the industry that may never truly bounce back until a vaccine is approved and widely distributed, allowing people to shop and dine indoors again without fear.
Foot traffic to brick-and-mortar stores selling primarily discretionary goods, including apparel retailers, remains down by as much as 43 percent from last year, according to Morgan Stanley’s research.
That persistently low traffic — following weeks and even months of temporary store closures — helps to explain why a record number of retailers have declared bankruptcy or closed down during the pandemic, even as sales of products like groceries, at-home entertainment and appliances have been booming. U.S. Roundup
As learning pods emerge across the country, priced-out families are in search of alternatives.
Shy Rodriguez with her sons, Shawn Pagan, 11, left, and Jaiden Pagan, 8, at their home in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Ms. Rodriguez has been trying to recruit other parents for a “pool” that would share child care responsibilities.Credit…Hannah Yoon for The New York Times
Whatever one calls them — learning pods, pandemic pods or microschools — small groups that hire teachers to supplement or even replace the virtual instruction offered by public schools have become an obsession among many parents of means.
Practically overnight, a virtual cottage industry of companies and consultants has emerged to help families organize these small-group, in-home instruction pods and pair them with instructors, many of whom are marketing themselves on Facebook pages and neighborhood listservs.
But the cost — often from $30 an hour per child to $100 or more — has put them out of reach for most families, generating concerns that the trend could make public education even more segregated and unequal.
Shy Rodriguez, a single mother in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., with two sons, ages 8 and 11, said the pods were discouraging for people who cannot afford them. People who live paycheck to paycheck, she said, feel “like we’re directly failing our children because we can’t offer or afford the same level of opportunities.”
In Washington, D.C., one parent started a GoFundMe page to raise money to subsidize learning pods for low-income students in the district.
Education experts say fund-raising efforts and “pod scholarships,” however well meaning, are no solution for millions of low-income parents juggling the educational, child care and economic challenges of the pandemic. More useful, they say, would be if school districts or city governments created their own version of learning pods, especially for at-risk students or children of essential workers.
In other news from around the United States:
- The five metropolitan areas that now have the highest rate of new coronavirus cases relative to their population are all in South Texas, according to data compiled by The New York Times.
- Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan said Friday that the state would give four million free face masks to homeless shelters, tribal organizations, community health centers, schools and grocery stores. The effort, which targets people particularly vulnerable to the virus, includes one million masks provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and 1.5 million masks donated by Ford Motor.
- The National September 11 Memorial & Museum canceled its annual light display on the anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks because of the coronavirus. The decision was made “after concluding the health risks during the pandemic were far too great for the large crew,” a museum spokesman said.
- The N.C.A.A. president, Mark Emmert, announced Thursday that Division I fall sports championships excluding football would be canceled. The championships were not explicitly dropped for health and safety reasons, but because there were fewer than the benchmark 50 percent of teams to compete in sports like women’s volleyball, soccer, cross country and men’s water polo.
- Vietnam registers to buy Russia’s rushed vaccine.
Health workers in Vietnam tested a woman repatriated from Singapore for the coronavirus last week at a military base in the southern province of Dong Thap.Credit…Mai Nguyen/Reuters
Vietnam’s health ministry announced that it had registered to buy Russia’s coronavirus vaccine, despite global health experts’ concerns that Russia is using it before the last phase of human trials have even begun.
The ministry said it had also registered to buy a vaccine from the United Kingdom. It did not say how many doses of foreign vaccines it expected to buy, and cautioned that using them would depend on the progress of clinical trials and compliance with Vietnam’s “strict regulations.”
Vietnam has said it is developing its own vaccine that it aims to make available by the end of next year.
Coronavirus Schools Briefing: The pandemic is upending education. Get the latest news and tips as students go back to school.
“The Ministry of Health of Vietnam will be determined and make every effort to get the vaccine for COVID-19 prevention and control as soon as possible,” said a statement posted on the ministry’s website. Using aggressive contact tracing, isolation and public education, the country has been one of the most successful in containing the virus, reporting its first death two weeks ago. But it is now fighting an outbreak that began in the central city of Danang and has spread to other parts of the country, causing about 400 cases and claiming 21 lives.
Vietnamese health officials say they have identified several versions of the virus in the country, and that the one causing the Danang outbreak is more contagious and severe than the others.
As of Friday, Vietnam reported a total of 929 cases, according to a New York Times database, many in people quarantined after returning from abroad.
Vietnam and Russia have collaborated since at least the 1960s. As part of the Soviet Union, Russia was a major supporter and weapons supplier to Vietnam as it fought against the United States in the Vietnam War.
Vietnam, which remains a Communist state, has purchased six Kilo-class submarines from Russia over the last decade to help patrol the South China Sea, an area of rising tension with China, a neighbor and longtime adversary.
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North Korea, fighting the virus and flooding, lifts a border city’s lockdown.
North Korea on Friday lifted a lockdown that it had imposed on a border city last month, but without providing any details or saying whether the nation has a coronavirus outbreak. North Korea imposed the lockdown in Kaesong, near the border with South Korea, based on the government’s suspicion that a runaway from South Korea had brought the virus with him. On Friday, it said only that the reversal had been “based on the scientific verification and guarantee by a professional anti-epidemic organization.”
North Korea sealed its borders in late January and has insisted for months that it had no coronavirus cases, although outside experts questioned the claim. It has not revealed whether the defector who crossed back from South Korea tested positive.
This summer, an unusually long monsoon season, as well as torrential rains, have set off floods and landslides in parts of North Korea that suffer chronic food shortages even during normal years.
The twin calamities of the pandemic and the floods have battered an economy that was already hamstrung by the sanctions imposed by the United Nations for North Korea’s nuclear weapons development — and which went into a tailspin this year as the border restrictions cut deeply into exports and imports with China, the North’s primary trading partner.
North Korea’s leader, Kim-Jong-un, has said the nation faces “two crises at the same time.” But on Friday, the North’s state-run media reported that he had ordered his country not to accept any international aid for fear that outside help might bring in the coronavirus.
By precluding outside aid, he appeared to be denying Seoul and Washington a chance to thaw relations with the North through humanitarian shipments.
“North Korea’s rejection of flood relief is ostensibly to prevent transmission of Covid-19 into the country,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. “But humanitarian assistance is heavily politicized by the Kim regime, as it does not want to show weakness to the domestic population or international rivals.”
