Covid-19 Live Updates: Opening of U.S. Education System Brings Strike Threats, New Cases and Improvisation

Some teachers’ unions push to delay in-person learning as more colleges go online only.

Educators and families around the United States continue to grapple this week with the complicated realities of opening schools in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, as teachers’ unions threaten strikes, colleges rethink reopening plans on the fly, and school districts discover positive cases and improvise quarantines and classroom cleanings.

The voice of teachers in the reopening debate is likely to take center stage Wednesday afternoon in Michigan, where the Detroit Federation of Teachers plans to vote on whether to strike in protest over plans to open public schools for in-person learning.

“It’s just simply not safe for us to return into our buildings and classrooms right now,” the union said in a video statement, noting more than 1,400 Covid-related deaths in the community.

New York City’s powerful teachers’ union sought to ramp up pressure on the mayor on Wednesday to delay or call off his plan to reopen the city’s 1,800 schools on Sept. 10. The president of the United Federation of Teachers threatened to sue the city or to support a strike if the city could not satisfy a list of safety demands created by his union, and called for all students and staff to be tested before school starts. Public sector employees are legally barred from striking in New York, but teachers have threatened to hold unauthorized sick-outs if they do not believe school buildings are safe. The mayor hit back at the union later Wednesday, saying his focus was on students and families, not political “games.”

Some colleges and universities are also taking drastic action as outbreaks flare on just-reopened campuses. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill moved undergraduate classes entirely online this week because of four clusters of infections, and the University of Notre Dame said on Tuesday that it would move to online instruction for at least the next two weeks to control a growing outbreak.

Michigan State University, which had planned to open Sept. 2 for in-person classes, announced on Tuesday that all undergraduates would be learning remotely.

College sorority and fraternity houses have had outbreaks. Photos and videos circulated widely on the internet have shown college-age people gathering maskless outside bars in college towns, or partying in large numbers.

In Georgia, where some K-12 school districts opened without a mask mandate, a number of high schools have closed temporarily after outbreaks were discovered.

In Florida this week, Gov. Ron DeSantis compared the commitment of teachers and administrators to the resolve of Navy SEALs going after Osama bin Laden. The state has ordered all schools to offer in-person instruction by Aug. 31, except in hard-hit Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach Counties.

Many students across the country will be starting school from home — and their parents will be getting little help. In a recent survey for The New York Times, just one in seven parents said their children would be returning to school full-time this fall, but four in five said they would have no in-person help educating and caring for the children at home.

Trump administration officials have tried taking a political sledgehammer to China over the coronavirus pandemic, asserting that the Chinese Communist Party covered up the initial outbreak and allowed the virus to spread around the globe.

But within the United States government, intelligence officials have arrived at a more nuanced and complex finding of what Chinese officials did wrong in January, report Edward Wong, Julian E. Barnes and Zolan Kanno-Youngs.

Officials in Beijing were kept in the dark for weeks about the potential devastation of the virus by local officials in central China, according to American officials familiar with a new internal assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies.

The assessment concluded that officials in the city of Wuhan and in Hubei Province, where the outbreak began late last year, tried to hide information from China’s central leadership. The finding is consistent with reporting by news organizations and with assessments by China experts of the country’s opaque governance system.

Local officials often withhold information from Beijing for fear of reprisal, current and former American officials say.

The new assessment does not contradict the Trump administration’s criticism of China, but adds perspective and context to actions — and inaction — that created the global crisis.

President Trump said in a July 4 speech at the White House that “China’s secrecy, deceptions and cover-up” enabled the pandemic, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted the administration was “telling the truth every day” about “the Communist cover-up of that virus.” The accusations dovetail with advice from Trump campaign strategists to look tough on China.

But the broad political messaging leaves an impression that Mr. Xi and other top officials knew of the dangers of the new coronavirus in the early days and went to great lengths to hide them.

The assessment, originally circulated in June, has classified and unclassified sections, and it represents the consensus of the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies. It still supports the overall notion that Communist Party officials hid important information from the world, U.S. officials said. And senior officials in Beijing, even as they were scrambling to pry data from officials in central China, played a role in obscuring the outbreak by withholding information from the World Health Organization.

But the report adds to a body of evidence that shows how the malfeasance of local Chinese officials appeared to be a decisive factor in the spread of the virus within Wuhan and beyond.

Last week, just as the Food and Drug Administration was preparing to issue an emergency authorization for blood plasma as a Covid-19 treatment, a group of top federal health officials including Dr. Anthony S. Fauci intervened, arguing that emerging data on the treatment was too weak, according to two senior administration officials.

The authorization is on hold for now as more data is reviewed, according to H. Clifford Lane, the clinical director at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. An emergency approval could still be issued in the near future, he said.

Donated by people who have survived the disease, antibody-rich plasma is considered safe. President Trump has hailed it as a “beautiful ingredient” in the veins of people who have survived Covid-19.

But clinical trials have not proved whether plasma can help people fighting the coronavirus.

Several top health officials — led by Dr. Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, and including Dr. Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, and Dr. Lane — urged their colleagues last week to hold off, citing recent data from the country’s largest plasma study, run by the Mayo Clinic. They thought the study’s data was not strong enough to warrant an emergency approval.

“The three of us are pretty aligned on the importance of robust data through randomized control trials, and that a pandemic does not change that,” Dr. Lane said in an interview on Tuesday.

The drafted emergency authorization leaned on the history of plasma’s use in other disease outbreaks and in animal research and a spate of plasma studies, including the Mayo Clinic’s program, which has treated more than 66,000 Covid-19 patients with plasma, thanks to financing from the federal government.

An F.D.A. spokeswoman declined to comment.

Plasma, the pale yellow liquid left over after blood is stripped of its red and white cells, has been the subject of months of intense enthusiasm from scientists, celebrities and Mr. Trump, part of the administration’s push for coronavirus treatments as a stopgap while pharmaceutical companies race to complete dozens of clinical trials for vaccines.

Senate Republicans are circulating text of a narrow virus relief package that would spend less money, in fewer areas, than earlier offers, including reviving extra unemployment benefits at half the original rate.

The draft measure appears to be an effort to break through the political stalemate over providing another round of economic stimulus to Americans during the pandemic. And it comes at a time when rank-and-file lawmakers facing re-election from both parties have grown increasingly uneasy with the lack of congressional action.

The latest offer, however, is unlikely to alter the debate in Washington, where Democrats have repeatedly rejected previous Republican offers as insufficient, a theme likely to be raised Wednesday evening during the Democratic National Convention when Speaker Nancy Pelosi, of California, is scheduled to speak.

Among the considerations in the new legislation is providing $105 billion for schools as students have begun returning to classes, and establishing liability protections — a longtime priority for the majority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — that Mr. Trump has dismissed as not essential.

But the proposal drops one of the few areas of bipartisan consensus from the original Republican plan and something Mr. Trump has said he wants to see: a second round of direct payments to low- and middle-income Americans.

It was not clear whether senators, currently scattered across the country until early September for the annual summer recess, will vote on the measure anytime soon.

Federal Reserve officials have emphasized the need for continuing economic assistance. Minutes from a meeting last month show that a major point of discussion was the importance of additional fiscal policy support — in other words, money from Congress — which Fed officials noted was “uncertain” in the short term.

The July 28-29 meeting took place just before government support programs lapsed, including enhanced unemployment benefits. More than two weeks later, it remains unclear whether and when additional government support for newly unemployed Americans and struggling businesses will materialize.

Ms. Pelosi called House members back early from their summer recess to vote Saturday on legislation addressing changes to the Postal Service and providing $25 billion to the beleaguered agency, and dozens of House lawmakers have signed on to a letter asking for a second vote on Saturday, on legislation that would revive the $600 weekly federal benefit.

House Democrats request a watchdog inquiry into the Trump administration’s process for collecting virus data.

Top House Democrats called on Wednesday for a congressional watchdog agency to investigate the way the Trump administration is collecting coronavirus information, saying they are concerned that abrupt shifts in hospital reporting requirements are generating flawed data and “undermine the nation’s Covid-19 response.”

The Democrats — Representative Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey, the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and two subcommittee chairwomen, Representatives Anna G. Eshoo of California and Diana DeGette of Colorado — made the request in a letter, not yet made public, sent Wednesday morning to the head of the Government Accountability Office, an independent and nonpartisan agency that works for Congress.

A G.A.O. spokeswoman said it had received the request, but no decisions have been made.

The lawmakers objected to a July order from the Department of Health and Human Services for hospitals to stop reporting to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and instead send information on caseloads, deaths, bed capacity and other aspects of the response, to TeleTracking Technologies, a private vendor based in Pittsburgh. Experts say the switch has been burdensome for hospitals and have raised questions about the reliability of the data, but H.H.S. officials say the switch was necessary to streamline data collection and increase reporting.

The letter outlined three areas of inquiry: What “benefits or challenges” did the new reporting requirements have on the government’s response; how has the administration “monitored, tracked and aggregated data” through its various reporting systems; and “what was the timeline” that led to the decision to replace the C.D.C. system with the one run by TeleTracking?

“Not only have H.H.S.’s actions seemingly sidelined the nation’s top public health officials, but they have also reportedly led to unnecessary confusion, additional burden on critical Covid-19 response professionals, and the loss of timely and reliable data, all in the midst of the pandemic when people’s lives are at stake,” the lawmakers wrote.

GLOBAL ROUNDUP

Venezuela is treating the infected like criminals in its virus crackdown.

President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela has tackled the virus much as he has any internal threat to his rule: by deploying his repressive security apparatus against it.

Officials in Venezuela’s government are denouncing people who may have come into contact with the coronavirus as “bioterrorists” and urging their neighbors to report them. The government is detaining and intimidating doctors and experts who question Mr. Maduro’s policies on the virus.

And it is corralling thousands of Venezuelans who are streaming home after losing jobs abroad, holding them in makeshift containment centers out of fear that they may be infected.

In commandeered hotels, disused schools and cordoned-off bus stations, the returning Venezuelans are forced into crowded rooms with limited food, water or masks and held under military guard for weeks or months for virus tests or treatment with unproven medications, according to interviews with the detainees, videos they have taken on their cellphones and government documents.

“They told us we’re contaminated, that we’re guilty of infecting the country,” said Javier Aristizabal, a nurse from the capital, Caracas, who said he spent 70 days in centers after he returned from Colombia in March.

In one major city, San Cristóbal, governing party activists are marking the homes of families suspected of having the virus with plaques and threatening them with detention, residents said. In another city, Maracaibo, the police are patrolling the streets in search of Venezuelans who re-entered the country without official approval.

“This is the only country in the world where having Covid is a crime,” said Sergio Hidalgo, a Venezuelan opposition activist who said he had come down with symptoms of the virus, only to find police officers at his door.

In other developments around the world:

• The head of the organization responsible for approving vaccines in Germany expects the first doses of a coronavirus vaccine to be available in the country by the beginning of next year. Klaus Cichutek, the president of the Paul Ehrlich Institute, said the timing was contingent on whether “the data in the Phase 3 trials prove the efficacy and safety of vaccine products.” On Tuesday, Germany recorded 1,510 new cases, according to a Times database, the country’s highest daily total since the beginning of May.

• Pope Francis said on Wednesday that a vaccine should be made universally available, especially to the poor. “How sad it would be if access to a Covid-19 vaccine were made available only to the rich,” the pope said during his weekly address. The pandemic, he said, was a crisis that could help improve the world by overcoming the “social injustice, lack of equal opportunity and marginalization of the poor,” adding, “We must come out better.”

• Finland announced that it would tighten restrictions on incoming travelers starting Monday. Interior Minister Maria Ohisalo said that travel from Iceland, Greece, Malta, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Ireland, Cyprus, San Marino and Japan would be limited to essential trips, with a mandatory two-week quarantine upon return, according to Reuters. Finland has some of the most severe travel restrictions in Europe and has recorded 7,805 cases, a relatively low number.

• Aiming to provide a better picture of how the virus is spreading across Britain, the government announced a rapid expansion of one of its testing programs, which selects a random sample of the population, regardless of symptoms. The survey, which currently tests 28,000 people every two weeks in England, will be expanded to all parts of the United Kingdom, and a new target has been set of testing 150,000 people every two weeks by October. At least 41,000 people have died in Britain, which has struggled in its efforts to track down those who have been exposed.

• Nepal plans to reimpose a strict lockdown and curfew in the Kathmandu Valley for a week, the country’s news media reported. All movement except essential services will be restricted. Nepal has reported at least 4,300 cases in the past week, for a total of at least 28,000.

• The Australian government has signed a deal with the drugmaker AstraZeneca to secure a potential vaccine, and promised to offer it free to its 25 million citizens if clinical trials were successful.

A fishing boat carries direct evidence of immunity.

A fishing vessel that left Seattle in May returned with an unexpected catch: the first direct evidence in humans that antibodies to the coronavirus can thwart infection.

More than 100 crew members aboard the American Dynasty were stricken by the infection over 18 days at sea. But only three sailors, all of whom initially carried antibodies, remained virus-free, according to a new report.

Although the study is small, it addresses one of the most important questions in the pandemic: whether the immune response to one bout with the virus protects against reinfection.

“Knowing the answer to this question is critical for vaccine design and epidemiology,” tweeted Jesse Bloom, an evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and one of the study’s authors.

The American Dynasty carried 113 men and nine women. All crew members had been tested for both virus and antibodies as part of a routine screening before setting sail. (The researchers did not have access to the results from two members.)

The trawler returned to shore after 18 days at sea when a crew member became ill enough to need hospitalization. The sailors were tested for the presence of virus and antibodies again and for up to 50 days after their return.

The three sailors who were confirmed to carry neutralizing antibodies did not test positive for the virus during the course of the study; 103 of the remaining 117 became infected.

“Just looking at the numbers, it becomes clear that it’s unlikely that all of these three people were protected by chance,” said Florian Krammer, an immunologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

U.S. health officials announce nationwide sewage testing for the virus.

Federal health officials announced on Monday a nationwide plan to begin testing sewage for the virus, as a potential measure of where the virus is spreading and at what rate. Infected people can pass the virus in their feces, and scientists are able to detect its levels in samples of wastewater from local sewage treatment centers.

In a statement, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that it “is currently developing a portal for state, tribal, local, and territorial health departments to submit wastewater testing data into a national database for use in summarizing and interpreting data for public health action.” The program is intended to compliment other measures, like clinical testing, not replace them, the statement read.

Public health workers have analyzed sewage to track other viral outbreaks, like polio, for decades. The technology has advanced to a stage where it can estimate levels of the virus, providing a rough read on the prevalence of infections in an entire community.

The new initiative came days after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York announced a $500,000 wastewater testing pilot that would begin with samples from Albany, Newburgh and Buffalo, as well as from Onondaga County. On Tuesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City said that the city was eager to participate as the program expanded.

“The city is especially well positioned to use this technology because of our infrastructure,” Mr. de Blasio said.

U.S. ROUNDUP

1.5 million antibody tests show what parts of New York City were hit the hardest.

New York City on Tuesday released more than 1.46 million coronavirus antibody test results, the largest number to date, providing more evidence of how the virus penetrated deeply into some lower-income communities while passing more lightly across affluent parts of the city.

In one ZIP code in Queens, more than 50 percent of people who had gotten tested were found to have antibodies, a strikingly high rate. But no ZIP code south of 96th Street in Manhattan had a positive rate of more than 20 percent.

Across the city, more than 27 percent of those tested had positive antibody results. The borough with the highest rate was the Bronx, at 33 percent. Manhattan had the lowest rate, at 19 percent.

Much remains unknown about the degree of protection against Covid-19 that antibodies may offer, or how long that protection may last. But the neighborhoods with more residents who were infected at the height of New York’s outbreak in March and April may be less likely to be among the hardest hit during a second wave.

On the other hand, neighborhoods in which few residents have been infected may find themselves more vulnerable in the event of a resurgence.

Elsewhere in the United States:

• Apple reached reach $2 trillion in value, with half added in the past 21 weeks, while the global economy shrank faster than ever before amid the pandemic.

• The 4,600 midshipmen, or students, at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., began a mix of online and in-person classes on Wednesday, but not all of them will be on campus right away. About 500 students will be housed off campus because dormitory space has been set aside for those who may need to quarantine. The U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., has more space available, and allowed all of its cadets to be on campus when classes began Monday.

• The University of Notre Dame in Indiana, which moved to online instruction after a surge of cases, said Wednesday that it was pausing football practice for at least a day “in an abundance of caution.” The announcement came less than a day after Notre Dame said that athletic activities would continue during the university’s two-week run of remote learning. The football team is scheduled to begin its season on Sept. 12.

Reporting was contributed by Peter Baker, Alan Blinder, Alexander Burns, Benedict Carey, Choe Sang-Hun, Emily Cochrane, Nick Corasaniti, Thomas Erdbrink, Richard Fausset, Sheri Fink, Jacey Fortin, Katie Glueck, Joseph Goldstein, Jason Gutierrez, Isayen Herrera, John Ismay, Mike Ives, Jennifer Jett, Anatoly Kurmanaev, Sharon LaFraniere, Apoorva Mandavilli, Alex Marshall, Jonathan Martin, Claire Cain Miller, Adam Nagourney, Jack Nicas, Elisabetta Povoledo, Frances Robles, Anna Schaverien, Christopher F. Schuetze, Eliza Shapiro, Jeanna Smialek, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Eileen Sullivan, Jim Tankersley, Sheyla Urdaneta, Noah Weiland and Elaine Yu.