Coronavirus Live Updates: C.D.C. Says Cases Could Be 2 to 13 Times Higher Than Reported in Parts of U.S.

A testing site in Miami Beach on Tuesday. Miami-Dade County plans to start fining people who violate its mask requirement.Credit...Saul Martinez for The New York Times

21 July 2020

U.S. officials accuse Chinese hackers of targeting vaccine development on behalf of the country’s intelligence service. Covid-19 patients may be significantly prone to blood clotting problems.

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Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said on CNN that he was not invited to the White House for President Trump’s news conference this afternoon.

Here’s what you need to know:

• The C.D.C. says the number of people infected ‘far exceeds the number of reported cases’ in parts of the U.S.
• Dr. Fauci, not invited to the president’s news conference, considers himself ‘more of a realist than an alarmist.’
• U.S. officials accuse two hackers of trying to steal virus vaccine data for China.
• Getting the European Union to agree to a landmark stimulus package required compromises.
• Senate Republicans outline their opening proposal for the next round of relief.
• Pharmaceutical executives tell Congress a vaccine might be ready within six months.
• Here are some of the latest places where mask requirements are appearing.

The C.D.C. says the number of people infected ‘far exceeds the number of reported cases’ in parts of the U.S.

The number of people infected with the coronavirus in different parts of the United States has been anywhere from two to 13 times higher than the reported rates for those regions, according to data released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The findings suggest that large numbers of people who did not have symptoms or did not seek medical care may have kept the virus circulating in their communities. The study is the largest of its kind to date, although some early data was released last month.

“These data continue to show that the number of people who have been infected with the virus that causes Covid-19 far exceeds the number of reported cases,” Dr. Fiona Havers, the C.D.C. researcher who led the study, said in an email. “Many of these people likely had no symptoms or mild illness and may have had no idea that they were infected.”

The researchers analyzed samples from people who had routine clinical tests, or were inpatients at hospitals, in 10 cities and states for evidence of prior virus infection. The team released early data for six of the sites in June, and for all 10 locations Tuesday in the journal JAMA. They also released data from later times for eight sites to the C.D.C.’s website on Tuesday.

About 40 percent of infected people do not develop symptoms, but they may still pass the virus on to others. The United States now tests roughly 700,000 people a day. The new results highlight the need for much more testing to detect infection levels and contain the viral spread in parts of the country.

For example, in Missouri, the prevalence of infections as of May 30 was 2.8 percent or 171,000, 13 times the reported rate of 12,956 cases, suggesting that the state missed most people with the virus who might have contributed to its outsized outbreak.

In some regions, the gap between estimated infections and reported cases decreased as testing capacity and reporting improved. New York City, for example, showed a 12-fold difference between actual infections and reported cases in early April, but by early May the difference was down to tenfold.

The study indicates that even the hardest-hit area in the study — New York City, where nearly one in four people has been exposed to the virus — is nowhere near achieving herd immunity, the level of exposure at which the spread of the virus would start to dwindle on its own. To reach that level, experts believe at least 60 percent of people in a particular place would have had to be exposed to the virus.

 

 

 

“These figures suggest that the U.S. is nowhere near herd immunity,” said Carl Bergstrom, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Washington in Seattle.

 

United States ›	On July 20	14-day change	Trend
New cases	59,966	+32%
New deaths	531	+64%

Where cases are rising fastest

 

U.S. hot spots ›

Worldwide ›

Dr. Fauci, not invited to the president’s news conference, considers himself ‘more of a realist than an alarmist.’

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci listened during remarks by President Trump in the Rose Garden of the White House in May. Dr. Fauci said he was not invited to the White House for the president’s briefing.Credit...Samuel Corum for The New York Times

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci defended himself against comments President Trump made in a Fox News interview on Sunday, when he called the nation’s top infectious disease expert a “little bit of an alarmist.”

“People have their opinion about my reaction to things,” Dr. Fauci said in an interview on CNN on Tuesday afternoon. “I consider myself more of a realist than an alarmist.”

His comments came less than an hour before Mr. Trump was expected to speak to reporters at the White House about his administration’s coronavirus response efforts, creating the appearance of a kind of parallel briefing where he offered public health advice Mr. Trump has often declined to deliver. “Close the bars. Stay physically distant,” Dr. Fauci said. “Outdoors better than indoors.”

“Really fundamental things,” he added. “It’s not rocket science.”

Dr. Fauci said he was not invited to the White House for the president’s news conference, which was expected to be about the virus.

 

He spoke as Senate Republicans were moving closer on Tuesday to persuading the White House to embrace their proposal to include $25 billion for testing and tracing efforts nationwide and $25 billion for health agencies on the front line of the pandemic, including the C.D.C. and the National Institutes of Health, according to people familiar with the talks.

Administration officials had infuriated Republicans over the weekend by refusing to accept the funding, a position that many lawmakers viewed as tone deaf given that more than 3.8 million people in the United States have been infected and several states are seeing spikes in cases.

Dr. Fauci said in the interview that he was concerned about the lag time in some states for test results, including in the South. “When you get to six or 7 days, that kind of really mitigates against getting good tracing,” he said. “We’ve got to do better on that.”

His appearance on CNN was a rare one on national media. As his warnings about the virus’s spread have become more dire in recent weeks, White House communications officials have moved to block or ignore requests Dr. Fauci receives to appear on broadcast media.

As an alternative, he has widened the scope and format of his public appearances, talking online with Georgetown University students, with local media in Alabama, and with Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook.

U.S. officials accuse two hackers of trying to steal virus vaccine data for China.

Researchers in China are trying to develop their own coronavirus vaccine.Credit...Noel Celis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The U.S. Justice Department accused a pair of Chinese hackers on Tuesday of targeting vaccine development on behalf of the country’s intelligence service.

 

Justice Department officials called the suspects a blended threat who sometimes worked on behalf of China’s spy services and sometimes worked to enrich themselves. The officials said that an indictment secured against them earlier this month and unsealed on Tuesday was the first to target such a threat.

The hacking was part of a broader, yearslong campaign of cybertheft by the pair aimed at an array of industries. American government officials said that at the behest of China’s spy service, the two hackers shifted their focus this year to trying to acquire vaccine research and other information about the pandemic.

The indictment came as the Trump administration has stepped up its criticism of Beijing, both for its theft of secrets and its failure to contain the spread of the virus, and is a significant escalation of that effort. The Justice Department said that China’s covert activity could potentially set back research efforts.

The accusations also came days after the United States and allied countries accused Russia of trying to steal information on vaccine development.

 

Getting the European Union to agree to a landmark stimulus package required compromises.

President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany after European leaders reached a deal in Brussels on Tuesday.Credit...Pool photo by John Thys

European Union leaders agreed Tuesday to a landmark spending package to rescue their economies: a 750 billion euro ($857 billion) stimulus agreement, spearheaded by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Emmanuel Macron of France, which sent a strong signal of solidarity even as it exposed deep new fault lines in a bloc reshaped by Britain’s exit.

The deal was notable for its firsts: Countries will raise large sums by selling bonds collectively, rather than individually; and much of that money will be handed out to member nations hit hardest by the pandemic as grants, not loans.

But as the dust settles on days of rancorous negotiations, the compromises that allowed Ms. Merkel of Germany, whose country holds the European Union’s rotating presidency, to guide 27 nations toward consensus are all the more apparent, and none too pretty, wrote Steven Erlanger and Matina Stevis-Gridneff in an analysis for The New York Times.

The fissures in the bloc that Ms. Merkel needed to bridge ran up, down and sideways. There were divides between the frugal north and a needy, hard-hit south; but also west to east, between Brussels and budding autocracies like Poland and Hungary that have tested the limits of the bloc’s liberal democratic values.

But allowing the crisis stirred by the pandemic to worsen was in the end considered more dangerous than trimming some of the bloc’s larger budgetary ambitions or even allowing continued challenges to the rule of law.

Economists predict a recession in Europe far worse than anything since World War II. France, Italy and Spain, the bloc’s second-, third- and fourth-largest economies, are expected to suffer the most, clocking in contractions of around 10 percent this year.

Here are other developments from around the world:

• Nearly 900,000 public workers in Britain, including teachers, doctors and security forces, will receive raises in recognition of the “vital contribution” they have made, Britain’s finance ministry announced Tuesday.
• Chinese officials are hailing a visit by a team of experts sent to Beijing by the World Health Organization to investigate the source of the coronavirus as evidence that the country is a responsible and transparent global power. But the investigation by the W.H.O. is likely to take many months and could face delays.
• Air passengers to China must provide a negative test result before boarding the flight, the aviation authority said. The test must be completed within five days of the trip.

Senate Republicans outline their opening proposal for the next round of relief.

Republicans’ opening proposal for the next U.S. virus relief package will include $105 billion for schools, additional funding for a popular federal loan program for small businesses and another round of direct payments to families, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said on Tuesday.

 

Sketching out the contours of what is expected to be a $1 trillion plan, Mr. McConnell doubled down on his insistence that the package include liability protections for businesses, medical workers and schools and businesses navigating the pandemic — a proposal that Democrats fiercely oppose.

Time is of the essence for lawmakers, given that expanded jobless benefits of an additional $600 per week are set to expire at the end of this month.

But privately, officials working on the package cautioned colleagues that the coming negotiation, a wide-ranging election-year brawl, was likely to stretch into August, leaving tens of millions of unemployed Americans without the extra help as Congress hammers out the latest recovery plan and the virus surges.

On Tuesday, Republicans faced the added challenge of coming to terms with their own president on the details of their legislation.

Mr. McConnell did not say whether the education aid in his bill would be conditioned on schools holding in-person classes in the fall, in line with President Trump’s demands, and made no mention of a payroll tax cut that the president has pressed to include, which has little support in either party. 

Nor did he mention how his proposal would address the expiration of enhanced unemployment benefits set to expire at the end of July, which Republicans have made clear they intend to scale back.

Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, and Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, were to attend a party luncheon and then meet with leading Democrats, who have already laid out their own, far more expansive, $3 trillion plan.

Speaking with House Democrats Tuesday morning on a private call, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she hoped their side could resolve its differences with Republicans and produce a bill by the end of next week, according to an official on the call who described it on the condition of anonymity.

Pharmaceutical executives tell Congress a vaccine might be ready within six months.

Executives from four companies in the race to produce a coronavirus vaccine told lawmakers on Tuesday that they are optimistic their products could be ready by the end of 2020 or the beginning of 2021. All four companies — AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna Therapeutics and Pfizer — are testing proprietary vaccines in various phases of human clinical trials.

“We would hope in the fall or towards the end of the year we have data that we could submit to the FDA for them to make a determination on whether to approve it,” said Dr. Stephen Hoge, the president of Moderna. He added, “We would also hope at that point to have millions of doses of vaccine available for deployment.”

Three of the firms have received federal government funding for their vaccine development efforts. AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, two of the recipients, pledged to the lawmakers that they would produce hundreds of millions of doses of their vaccines at no profit to themselves. Moderna, however, which has received $483 million from the government for its coronavirus research, said it would not be selling its vaccine at cost.

Pfizer, which has so far not received any federal funding for its vaccine, has also said it would seek profit for its product.

The testimony in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s oversight panel was punctuated by notes of optimism from representatives from each company, several of whom referenced promising early results from ongoing studies in people. On Monday, AstraZeneca and Pfizer released data indicating that their vaccines produced strong immune responses with only minor side effects.

Still, the actual effectiveness and durability of these responses against the virus has yet to be determined. No vaccine candidates have been proven effective for preventing infection by the coronavirus, or for protecting people from its severe effects.

A fifth contender, Merck, painted a far less rosy picture of the vaccine development landscape. Dr. Julie Gerberding, the company’s executive vice president and chief patient officer, made no promises about when its product would be ready, citing concerns about safety should the process be rushed.

 

“We do not expect to be able to accelerate the safety assessment,” Dr. Gerberding said.