Coronavirus Live Updates: In U.S., a Stark Human Toll; in Germany, Cluster Emerges as Church Reopens
As the national death toll approaches 100,000, U.S. governors and Trump advisers will appear on Sunday talk shows. Protesters returned to the streets in Hong Kong, and clashed with the police.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain said that the country would be reopened to international visitors in July.
A church service in Munich, Germany, last week.Credit...Lukas Barth-Tuttas/EPA, via ShutterstockChurch service in Germany leads to more than 40 infections.
As countries tentatively lifted lockdowns imposed on all facets of public life because of the pandemic, the perils of reopening are becoming increasingly clear. In Germany, which for weeks now has allowed houses of worship to hold services, 40 churchgoers became infected with the coronavirus during a service on May 10 at a Baptist church in Frankfurt, the health authorities have said.
Six parishioners were hospitalized, according to Wladimir Pritzkau, a leader of the parish.
The state of Hesse, where the infections occurred, has been allowing church services under special guidelines, including asking worshipers to keep five feet apart and requiring churches to have disinfectant readily available.
“We followed all the rules,” Mr. Pritzkau told the German news agency DPA, noting that the church did not know how many people were at the service two weeks ago.
The church has since moved its weekend services, which are held in hGerman and Russian, back online.
There are relatively few Baptist churches in Germany, and many people came to the church in Frankfurt from outside the immediate area. In the city of Hanau, about 15 miles east of Frankfurt, 17 new coronavirus infections were traced back to the church service.
The U.S. marches toward a grim toll: 100,000 coronavirus deaths.
Each one is more than a name. Each one had a unique life story. Each one succumbed to the coronavirus pandemic that swept across the globe, devastating families and industries and dealing a crippling blow to the world’s economy.
As the number of fatalities from Covid-19 passed 1.5 million, The New York Times sought to memorialize the tens of thousands who died of the coronavirus in the United States with a print front page like no other, framing the incalculable loss with a presentation of obituaries and death notices from newspapers around the country.
“A number is an imperfect measure when applied to the human condition. A number provides an answer to how many, but it can never convey the individual arcs of life, the 100,000 ways of greeting the morning and saying good night.
The immensity of such a sudden toll taxes our ability to comprehend, to understand that each number adding up to 100,000 represents someone among us just yesterday. Who was the 1,233rd person to die? The 27,587th? The 98,431st?
President Trump, meanwhile, played golf at his members-only club in Virginia, his first game since shutdowns began, as states reopened businesses, restaurants and other activities. He has been pushing states to reopen houses of worship, deeming religious institutions essential. In Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz said he would allow houses of worship to open this week. In New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said that gatherings of up to 10 people would be allowed, provided that social-distancing protocols were followed.
Other governors — including Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, Mike DeWine of Ohio and Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey — were to appear on the Sunday talk shows. So were several Trump administration officials, including Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator.
A new study from Northern California found that, compared with white or Hispanic patients, black patients seeking care have more advanced cases of Covid-19. The finding suggested that black patients may have had limited access to medical care or that they postponed seeking help until later in the course of their illness, when the disease was more advanced.
C.D.C. error in counting tests baffles scientists.
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Blood samples were collected at a restaurant in Brooklyn for a coronavirus antibody test, which reveals if a person has recovered from Covid-19.Credit...Misha Friedman for The New York Times
As it tracks the spread of the coronavirus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is combining tests that detect active infection with those that detect recovery from Covid-19 — a system that muddies the picture of the pandemic but raises the percentage of Americans tested as President Trump boasts about testing.
Now that serology tests, which look for antibodies in the blood of people who have recovered, are more widespread, C.D.C. officials said on Friday they would work to separate them from the results of diagnostic tests, which detect active infection. One agency website that tracks the data has been lumping them together.
Stunned epidemiologists say data from antibody tests and active virus tests should never be mixed because diagnostic testing seeks to quantify the amount of active disease in the population. Serological testing can also be unreliable. And patients who have had both diagnostic and serology tests would be counted twice in the totals.
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” said Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida. “All of us are really baffled.”
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