Coronavirus Live Updates: Read The Latest About The COVID-19 Outbreak

HuffPost reporters around the world are tracking the pandemic and its effects.

Read the latest updates on the coronavirus pandemic below. (To see the latest updates, you may need to refresh the page. All times are Eastern. For earlier updates on the pandemic, go here.

Merck CEO: Lawmakers Touting Vaccine By Year’s End Doing ‘Grave Disservice To The Public’ — 7/15/2020, 5:45 a.m.

Merck Chief Executive Ken Frazier said that lawmakers who were raising hopes for a coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year were doing a “grave disservice to the public.”

In an interview with Harvard Business School last week, the big pharma executive pointed out that the company’s most recent Ebola vaccine took more than five years to produce.

“I think at the end of the day, we don’t want to rush the vaccine before we’ve done rigorous science. We’ve seen in the past, for example, with the swine flu, that that vaccine did more harm than good,” he said.

See more of his interview here.

— Nick Visser

Fauci Urges Young People To ‘Think About Societal Responsibility’ As COVID-19 Cases ‘Unequivocally’ Rise In U.S. — 7/14/20, 5:44 p.m. ET

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, has urged young Americans to “think about your societal responsibility” as coronavirus cases continue to rise in the U.S.

“There is no doubt that there are more infections and we know that because the percentage of the cases that are tested that are positive are increasing,” he said during a virtual conference hosted by Georgetown University on Tuesday. “Therefore, unequivocally, you’re seeing truly more new cases.”

While Fauci said he did not at all blame young people for wanting to return to normal life and socializing, he appealed to them to “not only think about your individual personal responsibility” but the potential risks they could pose to others if they fell ill and spread the virus while asymptomatic.

“We’re all in this together,” he said. “Everybody has a role in getting this pandemic under control.”

Asked by a Georgetown student about depoliticizing conversations around the outbreak, Fauci urged her to not “get involved in any of the political nonsense.”

“It’s a waste of time and a distraction,” he said, stressing that the virus cares not what your party affiliation is.

“The best thing you could do is protect yourself and fortify your colleagues in their attempts to protect themselves from getting infected,” he said.

— Dominique Mosbergen

Florida Reports 132 New Deaths, Breaking State’s Single-Day Record — 7/14/2020, 11:35 a.m. ET

Florida reported 132 new coronavirus-linked deaths on Tuesday, setting a grim new record of single-day COVID-19 deaths in the state. The previous high of 120 was set on July 9, according to Treasure Coast Newspapers.

The Florida Health Department added 9,194 coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the state to 291,629.

Florida has the third highest number of known infections of all 50 states, behind only New York and California, according to The New York Times.

Florida, one of the earliest states to reopen amid the pandemic, has seen a surge in cases in recent weeks. Roughly 4 million people who are 65 or older —a population that is particularly vulnerable to the virus — live in Florida.

― Hayley Miller

Louisiana AG Tests Positive For Coronavirus Ahead Of Pence Visit — 7/14/20, 11:25 a.m. ET

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry is quarantining after testing positive for COVID-19 and will not be able to greet Vice President Mike Pence when he arrives for his visit Tuesday.

“Out of an overabundance of caution with the Vice President coming to our state, I was tested for Cornavirus,” Landry wrote in an email obtained by local newspaper The Advocate. “Though experiencing no symptoms, I tested positive for COVID-19.”

Landry said he was taking unspecified medications.

Pence is scheduled to speak with Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) and his health care team, as well as with higher education leaders, to discuss reopening schools and fall sports.

Last week, the conservative attorney general urged Louisiana schools to reopen in the fall without a mask mandate, arguing that it “creates a situation that may cross the line on liberty.” Edwards has ordered everyone in the state to wear masks in public and closed bars over the weekend in response to rising case numbers.

— Sara Boboltz

Nearly 1,000 U.S. Immigration Detention Center Employees Test Positive For Coronavirus — 7/14/2020, 6:30 a.m. ET

More than 930 employees of private contractors running U.S. immigration detention centers have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, according to congressional testimony given by company executives on Monday.

The heads of four companies — CoreCivic, The GEO Group, Management & Training Corp and LaSalle Corrections — that detain immigrants on contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported the infections among employees in response to questions from lawmakers.

ICE has reported 45 cases of COVID-19 among its direct staff at detention facilities. Most of the employees at the privately run centers, however, work for private contractors and are not included in ICE’s count.

Lawmakers have raised concerns about the spread of the virus inside nearly 70 centers across the country. More than 3,000 immigrants in ICE custody have tested positive for COVID-19, although some have recovered or been released

— Reuters

California’s 2 Largest School Districts Will Be Online-Only In The Fall — 7/14/2020, 5:45 a.m. ET

Los Angeles Unified and San Diego Unified public school districts will hold classes completely online when school resumes in the fall, officials said Monday. They are the largest school districts in the country to announce such plans.

In a joint statement, officials said ongoing research around the coronavirus remained “incomplete” and federal guidelines were “vague and contradictory.”

The decision prompted immediate condemnation from the White House. President Donald Trump has pushed for schools to completely reopen, and when asked about California on Monday, he said: “We have to open the schools. We have to get them open. And I think there’s a lot of politics going along. I think they think they’ll do better if they can keep the schools closed in the election.”

— Nick Visser

California Shuts Down Indoor Activities Statewide — 7/13/2020, 3:12 p.m. ET

Witnessing an alarming surge in new coronavirus cases across the state, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said Monday that he was aggressively scaling back indoor reopening plans.

“We are now ... effective today requiring all counties to close their indoor activities, their indoor operations in the following sectors: restaurants, wineries, tasting rooms, movie theaters, family entertainment centers, zoos and museums, card rooms and the shuttering of all bars,” he said at a press conference. “This is in every county in the state of California.”

The move affects 30 of California’s 58 counties, which have been allowed to set local rules stricter than the statewide ones. Newsom also named 30 counties that will be required to close fitness centers, places of worship, noncritical offices, personal care services, salons and malls.

— Lydia O’Connor

Opening Of Dallas Testing Site Delayed After Supplies Stolen — 7/13/20, 2:55 p.m. ET

Hospital officials in Dallas have been forced to delay the opening of a new walk-up testing site because “individuals broke into the storage location for the site and stole all of the equipment and supplies used to conduct testing,” officials said Monday.

The testing site, which is run by the Parkland Health and Hospital System, was set to open Monday but will now open Tuesday morning, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Texas is one of the states where COVID-19 cases are surging after lax restrictions and an aggressive reopening plan. The state has reported several single-day records in new cases over the last week, with as many as 10,000 new cases per day, and many hospitals are approaching full capacity. The state has ramped up testing capacity after lagging behind for months, but there’s now a delay in test results because labs are backlogged.

— Marina Fang

Hong Kong Disneyland To Close After Spike In Cases — 7/13/20, 12:29 p.m. ET

Hong Kong’s Disneyland will close starting Wednesday as part of “prevention efforts taking place across Hong Kong,” park officials said Monday, in response to a spike of 52 new COVID-19 cases in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong’s government announced new restrictions effective Wednesday, barring dine-in service at restaurants from 6 p.m. to 5 a.m and reducing the size of public gatherings from 50 people to just 4.

The park had reopened June 18 after being closed for nearly five months as the virus spread throughout East Asia.

Meanwhile in Florida, which reported more than 15,000 new cases on Sunday, Disney World is still open for business.

— Marina Fang

Florida, Arizona, Texas ‘Opened Too Early’ And ‘Too Aggressively,’ Public Health Expert Says — 7/13/20, 8:52 a.m. ET

Florida and other states that have reached a new peak in COVID-19 cases reopened businesses “too early” and “too aggressively,” the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute said Monday.

“We know how we got here. Florida, along with other states, opened too early when they weren’t quite ready,” Dr. Ashish Jha said on NBC’s “Today” show, citing bars and restaurants in particular, which have been the source of many new cases.

Jha added that governors and other leaders have been “slow to react” to the new surge. For example, in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has still not mandated masks even though many other states and municipalities have done so, and public health experts widely believe wearing a mask can help limit the spread of the coronavirus.

On Sunday, Florida set a new single-day record for the highest number of new cases, reporting more than 15,000. That exceeded the previous record set in April in New York, once the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S. but now one of the few states that have largely contained the virus.

Earlier this year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) earned praise for acting early to shut down the state. But in the last month, the number of cases has gone up again, and Jha said some parts of Southern California now look a lot like Arizona, Texas and Florida.

When asked why, he said state leaders “pulled back too early” and “were too slow to react” when cases began to increase again. He also said it was ill-advised to leave reopening decisions up to local governments.

—Marina Fang

Sydney Pub Cluster Adds To Second Wave Fears In Australia — 7/13/20, 7:55 a.m.

Australia’s most populous state reported 14 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday, with a growing cluster at a pub used by freight drivers traveling the country adding to fears of a second wave of the virus.

The new cases in New South Wales come after neighboring Victoria last week forced about 5 million people back into lockdown after a surge of new coronavirus cases.

Australia has avoided the high COVID-19 casualty numbers of other nations with swift and strict measures, recording fewer than 10,000 coronavirus cases in total, or about a sixth of the daily cases seen in the U.S. in recent days.

However, authorities are worried about rising cases of community transmission. This accounted for eight of the 14 new cases in New South Wales in the last 24 hours, while the rest were people who have returned from overseas and are already in hotel quarantine or have returned from Victoria.

The bulk of these community transmission cases were people who recently visited a pub in southwest Sydney, the Crossroads Hotel, with authorities confirming Monday afternoon that there are 21 cases linked to that cluster. In a bid to curtail the spread, authorities urged anyone who attended the pub to isolate for two weeks and get tested. On Monday, long lines of cars were waiting more than three hours to attend a drive-through test clinic at the venue.

In Victoria, authorities on Monday reported 177 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, the eighth consecutive day of triple-digit rises in COVID-19 cases, but down from 273 cases the previous day.

Read more.

— Reuters

200 Workers Quarantined On UK Farm Amid Coronavirus Outbreak — 7/13/20, 7:45 a.m.

Seventy-three key workers at a farm in the U.K. have tested positive for COVID-19 with dozens more now forced to self-isolate. Around 200 workers are employed for picking and packing work at the farm in Mathon, Herefordshire, in the west of England. Herefordshire Council is arranging food and essential supplies for residents on the site – who live in mobile homes based on the farm during the harvesting season – while they self-isolate.

In a statement farm owners AS Green and Co said: “Our work force and local community are our priority at this difficult time and we continue to follow the guidance of the relevant bodies to ensure that the spread of the virus is controlled and our workforce is supported.

“Public Health England advises that it is very unlikely COVID-19 can be transmitted through food or food packaging, so shoppers can remain confident buying British fruit and veg.”

The U.K. has recorded 44,819 deaths and 321,057 cases. Read more

— Sarah Turnnidge

Florida Sets U.S. Record For New Daily Coronavirus Cases — 7/12/20, 1:10 p.m. ET

Florida on Sunday reported more than 15,000 new cases of the coronavirus, setting a new national record for single-day tallies.

The total of 15,299 new cases, reported by Florida’s health department, is 2,452 cases higher than the daily record set by New York state in April, when it was the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has ordered bars to close in response to the outbreak, but has resisted calls for a statewide mandate to wear masks in public.

Single-day records were also reported in some of Florida’s largest cities on Sunday, including Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Fort Myers, West Palm Beach, Pensacola and Sarasota.

Read more here.

— Nina Golgowski

Louisiana Governor Shutters Bars And Orders State To Mask Up — 7/11/20, 5:18 p.m. ET

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) announced a new mask mandate Saturday as the state’s coronavirus crisis rapidly worsened. People aged 8 and up will be required to don a face covering in public, beginning at 12:01 a.m. Monday.

“At the end of the day, while I know that this is going to be unpopular with some and controversial with some, we know that face masks work. It really is that simple,” Edwards said in a news conference. “For some reason in this country and in the state of Louisiana, there has been a political dynamic that has emerged around the whole issue of masks. That doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Bars, which were permitted to reopen last month under the state’s phase two guidelines, will be ordered to close again.

Cases of COVID-19 have spiked in the last month across Louisiana, where the virus once appeared to be concentrated in the New Orleans area. The state has seen nearly 77,000 confirmed cases since the crisis began and in recent days has been adding new cases at a pace of roughly 2,000 per day. Much of the surge can be attributed to people who gather in bars and backyards, according to Edwards.

Edwards halted any further plans to reopen parts of the economy, saying Louisiana will remain in phase two at least until July 24. Certain parishes and municipalities will be able to opt out of the mask mandate, but only if they do not exceed a threshold of cases.

The Southern state’s actions followed a recent trend of backtracking on reopening across parts of the U.S. amid skyrocketing case counts. Local news outlets have reported that intensive care unit beds have become a scarce commodity in some of the state’s hospitals — meaning that some of the sickest patients could face difficulty obtaining treatment.

— Sara Boboltz

For more on the pandemic, go here.