Trump Superfans Line Up Early for Tulsa Rally

Officials at the BOK Center, the arena where the rally is scheduled to take place, have asked the campaign for a written health and safety plan detailing precautions it will take, including those related to social distancing.

“The BOK Center will encourage all attendees to remain masked throughout the duration of the event until they exit the building,” the center said in a statement, adding that 400 hand-sanitizing stations had been placed throughout the venue. “Signage reminding attendees of precautions will be placed throughout the building.”

The Trump campaign said Thursday that it was reviewing the letter from arena management.

“We take safety seriously, which is why we’re doing temperature checks for everyone attending, and providing masks and hand sanitizer,” the campaign said in a statement. “This will be a Trump rally, which means a big, boisterous, excited crowd.”

Mr. Trump has shrugged off concerns that attendees will be at risk of infection. The White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, said on Wednesday that attendees would be given face masks, but using them would be optional.

More than 140,000 cases were reported on Tuesday and another 166,000 on Wednesday, two of the three highest tallies since the outbreak began. Seventy-seven nations have seen a growth in new cases over the past two weeks, while only 43 have seen declines.

Brazil reported more than 32,000 new cases on Wednesday, the most in the world, and the United States was second, with more than 25,000. The leaders of both nations have been criticized for their handling of the outbreak.

On Thursday, California and Florida reported their highest daily totals of new cases yet. And Texas became the sixth state in the nation to surpass 100,000 cases, according to a New York Times database. Cases there have doubled over the past month.

The virus is also taking off in other parts of the world.

If the outbreak was defined early on by a series of shifting epicenters — including Wuhan, China; Iran; northern Italy; Spain; and New York — it is now defined by its wide and expanding scope. And more risks lie ahead as nations begin to reopen their economies.

In India, which initially placed all 1.3 billion of its citizens under a lockdown — then moved to reopen even with its strained public health system near the breaking point — officials reported a record number of new cases Wednesday. And the virus is now spreading rapidly in nearby Pakistan and Bangladesh as well.

And some countries where caseloads had appeared to taper — including Israel, Sweden and Costa Rica — are now watching them rise again.

U.S. Roundup

As cases mount in California, its governor orders mask wearing in many settings.

As cases continue to mount in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday ordered people to wear face masks in most indoor — and some outdoor — public settings.

“Simply put, we are seeing too many people with faces uncovered, putting at risk the real progress we have made in fighting the disease,” Mr. Newsom said. “California’s strategy to restart the economy and get people back to work will only be successful if people act safely and follow health recommendations. That means wearing a face covering, washing your hands and practicing physical distancing.”

The updated guidance comes amid national tension over masks, which have become a political flash point between those who prioritize safety and those who have come to associate them with political correctness. President Trump has eschewed masks in public. This week Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona, which is also seeing record numbers of new daily cases this week, gave mayors the power to require wearing masks.

In California, face mask requirements have varied from county to county, and at least seven county health officers have recently resigned amid controversy over those and other preventive measures. Earlier this week, Santa Clara County revealed that its public health officer had been threatened.

The state’s orders make exceptions for toddlers, people with disabilities that prevent them from wearing face coverings, restaurant customers while eating and people who are incarcerated.

Other news from around the United States:

Japan lifts a domestic travel ban despite new infections.

Mr. Abe’s government is also in discussions to ease international travel bans for passengers arriving from Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and Vietnam.

In Tokyo, which with close to 5,700 documented infections has the highest concentration of coronavirus cases in the country, Governor Yuriko Koike announced that all businesses could resume normal operations on Friday after about two months of restrictions on nightclubs, karaoke bars, restaurants, pachinko gambling parlors and other establishments.

The announcements came as Tokyo announced 41 new infections on Thursday, of which 19 were deemed close contacts of an infected person. When reported cases spiked earlier this week, Ms. Koike said they were mostly related to an intensive testing campaign in Tokyo’s nightlife district. The government has issued guidelines for nightclubs that include measures such as increasing disinfection and ventilation, mandating face masks and erecting plastic partitions between tables or at bar counters.

In announcing Tokyo’s infection numbers on Thursday, the government did not explain the routes of infection for more than half of the cases.

“We need to run the economy strongly by controlling the infection risks with less restrictive measures,” Mr. Abe said on Thursday evening in announcing the easing of domestic travel. He said that officials and citizens need to “take measures that put more emphasis on protecting jobs and life.”

Mr. Abe also announced that the government was introducing a smartphone app on Friday that will allow the health authorities to inform people who have been in close contact with an infected person and encourage them to self-isolate.

In remarks to reporters, Mr. Abe said that studies show a lockdown would not be necessary “when 60 percent of the population has the app that leads to early detection of infection.”

For months, British authorities went their own way, pursuing an app they promised would help ease the country out of lockdown, even as criticism grew that it posed privacy risks and would not work well.

Now, Britain plans to join other countries and design a new contact-tracing app based on software provided by Apple and Google.

It was an embarrassing turnaround, and just one of a string of pandemic missteps by the government. At one point, the government said the contact-tracing technology would be available to the public in May. Now the aim is to have it ready by winter.

British officials had counted on the app, which is intended to alert anyone who may have come near an infected person, such as on a bus or subway, to help prevent a new wave of infections.

Leaders stuck to a plan of building an app in-house even as other countries changed course. Germany and Italy, which both agreed to use Apple and Google’s technology more than a month ago, debuted contact-tracing apps this week.

British public health officials wanted to avoid using the software provided by Apple and Google because it limits the amount of data that can be centrally collected and analyzed — information they felt was critical in tracking the disease. But the British team struggled to build an app that worked properly without support from the Silicon Valley giants.

Apple and Google, whose operating systems run on nearly every smartphone on the planet, prevented outside apps that did not use their code from taking full advantage of a device’s ability to measure proximity. The companies took this approach in the interests of privacy.

Travelers looking to leave Beijing via plane or train are being required to show proof of a negative nucleic acid test taken within seven days before boarding. As a result, demand for tests has surged in the capital, with the wait-list at some hospitals stretching into September, according to Caixin, a Chinese investigative news outlet.

The latest flare-up emerged after 56 days of no new locally-transmitted cases in Beijing, and despite an order by China’s leader, Xi Jinping, to fortify the capital against the virus.

But Mr. Wu on Thursday expressed confidence that the peak of the latest wave had passed and that the number of new infections would soon be declining. “Beijing’s epidemic has already been controlled,” he said.

On Friday, Beijing recorded 25 new cases, four more than were reported a day earlier.

In other news from around the world:

• South Korea reported 49 more cases on Friday, as a second wave of infections continued to spread in the Seoul metropolitan area.

• Britain’s official coronavirus caseload surpassed 300,000 on Thursday.

• Nearly 500 medical workers in Russia have died after contracting the virus, more than four times the number announced previously, the head of a health watchdog agency said Thursday. But the agency later backtracked, saying the figure was not an official count — merely one from the internet.

“We did not want to be drawn into a political controversy,” Mr. Aron said in an interview published on Thursday by Variety magazine. “We thought it might be counterproductive if we forced mask wearing on those people who believe strongly that it is not necessary.”

Mr. Aron also said that AMC Theaters, the largest theater operator in the United States, would not perform temperature checks on patrons, a practice some businesses have adopted to screen for fever related to the virus.

The company had already announced this month that patrons might be encouraged, but not required, to wear masks but that face coverings would be mandatory for all employees, a point that Mr. Aron reiterated in the interview.

But his comments prompted a swift backlash anyway.

“How is public health ‘political?’” one person wrote on Twitter.

“Then I’m out!” appeared on another Twitter account. “You should be protecting your customers. Follow the science.”

A spokesman for AMC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

As cases rise in 20 states around the United States, pockets of student-athletes returning to campus have tested positive, underscoring the difficulty colleges and professional sports leagues face as they prepare for the possibility of a fall sports season.

At least eight Kansas State University athletes tested positive for the virus since returning to campus, officials said this week. University officials said athletes were being asked to quarantine for seven days after arriving on campus and were not being allowed to practice until they tested negative. Many of the athletes who tested positive were asymptomatic, according to their universities. As students return to campus, they risk bringing the virus with them and seeding outbreaks in parts of the country with relatively few cases. Some fall games can usually attract about 100,000 fans.

“Unless players are essentially in a bubble — insulated from the community and they are tested nearly every day — it would be very hard to see how football is able to be played this fall,” Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said Thursday on CNN. “If there is a second wave, which is certainly a possibility and which would be complicated by the predictable flu season, football may not happen this year.”

At least four Division I football games have already been canceled. On Thursday, the Atlantic Coast Conference said that it would move its annual kickoff event to a virtual format, following similar decisions by the Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and Southeastern Conferences.

In professional sports, no leagues have regular-season games on any public schedules. Because of precautions, there are few solid plans to include fans. And the N.F.L. slate could be in jeopardy as teams are unsure about the start of training camps in July.

Major League Baseball may not happen, either. For weeks, team owners and players have not been able to agree on how to stage a shortened season.

There are some glints of optimism. Professional golf, NASCAR and combat sports have returned — and tennis is expected to resume in August — though more as made-for-TV events than as anything resembling a collective experience. NASCAR will hold a race in Alabama this weekend, but attendance will be limited to 5,000 fans.

John Wittman, a spokesman for the governor, confirmed Gov. Abbott’s intentions to reopen public schools in the fall. He said that the Texas education commissioner, Mike Morath, “will be announcing a plan next week laying out guidelines and health protocols for students to safely return to school in the fall.” that includes both in-person and virtual learnin. ”

In a statement to the news media, Mr. Morath said the plan would allow for students, teachers and staff to return to school campuses for class, but he said that there will also be “flexibility” for students to be taught remotely if their families have health concerns.

Governor Abbott is moving forward with a plan to reopen the Texas economy and social activity even as the nation’s second-largest state faces a spike in cases and hospitalization rates. In a television interview earlier this week, the governor said his goal “is to see students back in classrooms.”

State Rep. Chris Turner of Grand Prairie, who participated in the conference call, confirmed that the governor told lawmakers that “schools will open” and said further details will emerge in the plan to be rolled out by the education agency.

Florida’s agricultural communities have become cradles of infection, fueling a disturbing spike in the state’s daily toll of new infections, which hit another record on Thursday, when more than 3,200 cases were reported. The implications go far beyond Florida: As case numbers in places there are swelling, many farmworkers are migrating north.

As in other agricultural communities around the country, Florida’s farming regions have a high degree of built-in risk. Fruit and vegetable pickers toil close to each other in fields, ride buses shoulder-to-shoulder and sleep in cramped apartments or in trailers with other laborers or several generations of their families.

While many of them are guest workers on temporary visas, others are undocumented, with little access to routine health care and an ingrained fear of the authorities.

Farmworkers tend to be younger and fitter than the rest of the population and may not suffer as severely from the virus. Some of them joke, in gallows humor, that if the tomato fertilizer has not killed them yet, maybe the virus will not.

Not long afterward, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said that while the state would not make its final decision on easing restrictions until Friday, he was still advising businesses to prepare.

Restaurants, many which have been open for takeout but do not have available outdoor space, would be able to place seating in curbside parking areas and on sidewalks adjacent to their restaurants, the mayor said. In July, the city would allow restaurant seating on 43 miles of streets closed to vehicle traffic. The mayor predicted that the expanded outdoor dining plan would save 5,000 of the city’s restaurants and 45,000 jobs.

The governor said he is also signing executive orders that allow the state to immediately suspend the liquor license of a business or shut it down if they’re not complying with reopening guidelines, as well to give bars the responsibility to limit the number of people gathered outside.

In Williamsburg in Brooklyn, Heather Sumner, 32, repeated a phrase commonly heard these days: “We can’t stay inside forever.”

Here’s what else is going on in New York:

• The mayor again repeated concerns that the virus might have spread during massive protests over systemic racism and police brutality. Still, he said that city and state officials had been encouraged by “the trend line” of test results and hospitalizations, which have stayed flat in recent weeks, and decided to allow the reopening to go forward.

• The mayor said that the city’s playgrounds, which have been shut since March, would also reopen on Monday. But team sports, like basketball, soccer and softball, will not be permitted in city parks.

• Mr. Cuomo said that he was considering requiring travelers coming into New York from Florida to quarantine for 14 days — a move similar to one Florida imposed on New Yorkers in March. “I have experts who have advised me to do that,” he said. “I’m considering it now.”

• The state would issue guidance to colleges and universities to allow some residential and in-person programming to resume this fall, the governor said. Schools needed to submit plans for monitoring the virus and discouraging its spread in order to reopen.

• Carnegie Hall, New York City Ballet and Lincoln Center all canceled their fall seasons, following similar announcements from the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic. It will be City Ballet’s first year without “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker” since its premiere in 1954 — disrupting a holiday tradition beloved by thousands, and leaving a big hole in the company’s budget.

When one of Madrid’s main public theaters reopened on Wednesday, the audience was limited to a third of the theater’s capacity because of virus-related restrictions.

The rest of the auditorium was filled with dummies.

Madrid is Spain’s last major city to be kept under a stricter version of a nationwide lockdown, ahead of the June 21 lifting of a state of emergency that was declared in mid-March.

Before the show, spectators lined up outside the Canal theater complex under the supervision of theater workers, in order to maintain social distancing and have their temperatures checked at the entrance.

Wall Street wavers as global markets decline and the weekly tally of U.S. jobless claims again exceeds a million.

Wall Street faced another day of unsteady trading on Thursday, with stocks drifting between negative and positive territory as investors considered new data on unemployment claims and the latest reports on fresh outbreaks.

In the end, the S&P 500 closed essentially unchanged.

Hoping to goose job growth, House Democrats said Thursday they would bring up a $1.5 trillion package of infrastructure improvements by month’s end. The 10-year plan is about twice as large as the bill they introduced in January to rebuild the nation’s highways, airports and other infrastructure, a size that Speaker Nancy Pelosi said reflects the toll of the pandemic.

“With the coronavirus, so many needs have been magnified,” Ms. Pelosi said.

The plan includes an additional $100 billion for schools, $100 billion for affordable housing and more money for clean energy projects.

There is little doubt that it will pass the Democratic-led House, but infrastructure plans have so far faced indifference in the Senate.

Trump derides virus testing and questions face masks in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

“I personally think testing is overrated, even though I created the greatest testing machine in history,” Mr. Trump said. He added that because more tests lead to a higher number of confirmed cases, at least in the short term, “in many ways, it makes us look bad.”