Here’s what you need to know:
- Senate Republicans are pushing ahead with their ‘skinny’ stimulus bill.
- More than 900,000 people worldwide have now died from the virus.
- For Black and Latino Americans, the virus is taking a disproportionate emotional and economic toll.
- Jakarta will reimpose restrictions as its hospitals fill up.
- Wuhan, the pandemic’s first epicenter, will resume international flights this month.
- The new sound of Japanese sports: Silence.
Senate Republicans are pushing ahead with their ‘skinny’ stimulus bill.
Senate Republicans plan to force a vote Thursday on their substantially scaled-back stimulus plan, in a maneuver all but guaranteed to fail amid opposition by Democrats who call the measure inadequate.
After months of struggling to overcome deep internal divisions over the scope of another relief measure, Republicans hope to present a near-united front in support of their latest plan. They can then try to blame the continuing impasse on Democrats, who are expected to oppose it en masse, denying it the 60 votes it would need to advance.
The package, which Republicans refer to as their “skinny” bill, includes federal aid for unemployed workers, small businesses, schools and vaccine development.
“I’m optimistic that we’ll have a good vote on our side,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said on Wednesday. “I would hope this might appeal to some of the Democrats.”
But Democrats, who have refused to accept any proposal less than $2.2 trillion, argue that the legislation does little to address the economic devastation of the pandemic.
The measure does not include another round of stimulus checks for American taxpayers or aid to state and local governments, omissions that cut down the overall price tag of the legislation. And while it would resume weekly federal jobless benefits that lapsed at the end of July, it would set them at $300 — half the original amount. Democrats are pressing to reinstitute the full payment.
“Instead of improving their offer, Senate Republicans have made it stingier and even less appropriate to the looming crisis that we have,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader. “I’m not sure what kind of negotiating strategy that is, but it sure isn’t serious strategy, and it sure won’t be successful.”
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who has been a point man in negotiations with Democrats on a recovery package, cast doubt Wednesday on whether any agreement could be reached, saying he was not sure whether there was still a chance.
“We’ll see,” Mr. Mnuchin said. “I hope there is. It’s important to a lot of people out there.”
More than 900,000 people worldwide have now died from the virus.
The global death toll from the coronavirus has surpassed 900,000, according to a New York Times database, and sickened at least 27.8 million people as of Thursday morning.
Seven months into the pandemic, the virus has been detected in almost every country.
The true death toll may be higher; The New York Times has found underestimates in the official death tallies in the United States and in more than a dozen other countries. The United States has the highest number of cases and deaths, followed by India, which reported more than 95,000 new cases on Thursday, and Brazil.
The pandemic is ebbing in some countries that were hit hard early on, but the number of new cases is growing faster than ever worldwide, with more than 200,000 reported each day on average. Cases are worryingly high in the India, the United States and Israel. In Brazil, cases are high but appear to be decreasing.
For Black and Latino Americans, the virus is taking a disproportionate emotional and economic toll.
A new survey highlights once again the disproportionately devastating effects the pandemic has had on Black and Latino Americans.
The survey, released on Thursday by the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation, found that one-third of respondents had experienced stress, anxiety or sadness since the coronavirus crisis began.
But mental health concerns were reported at significantly higher rates for Black, Latino, female and low-income respondents.
“The same systemic inequities that affect health outcomes are also affecting social issues,” said Yaphet Getachew, one of the survey’s authors.
Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has shown that Black and Latino residents are three times as likely to become infected with the virus and twice as likely to die from it as white Americans.
And last month, a C.D.C. survey found that Black and Latino people reported rising levels of anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts, and increased substance abuse, stemming from the stress of the virus.
Black and Latino Americans might experience more emotional stress because they are overrepresented in service sector jobs that do not allow for social distancing, the Commonwealth researchers said.
The researchers also found a gender disparity when it came to mental health problems, probably because of the child care burden falling disproportionately on women as schools closed.
The survey’s authors noted that mental health is often intertwined with economic stability. Their research shows Black and Latino people are more likely to have experienced financial challenges amid the health crisis, like the depletion of personal savings or debt.
They argued that their results point to an urgent need for more economic resources directed to Black and Latino communities. The Paycheck Protection Program, for example, was intended to prioritize lending to businesses owned by women and people of color, but many have reported trouble gaining access to those relief funds.
“We need to make sure the resources being disseminated for Covid-19 relief actually get to the communities that need them most,” said Laurie Zephyrin, another author of the report. “These surveys can help target where the need is.”
global roundup
Jakarta will reimpose restrictions as its hospitals fill up.
As hospitals in Indonesia’s capital near capacity, the authorities will reimpose a partial shutdown on Monday that includes a work-from-home requirement, a ban on large gatherings and restrictions on houses of worship.
“We will pull the emergency brake, which means we are forced to re-implement large-scale social restrictions like in the early days of the pandemic,” Jakarta’s governor, Anies Baswedan, told reporters on Wednesday.
Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most-populous nation, implemented social-distancing restrictions early in the pandemic but later relaxed them in the hope of restarting its stalled economy. In recent weeks, however, the number of reported cases has surged past 200,000, and independent experts say the total is likely many times higher.
Indonesia’s health care system is notoriously understaffed and underfunded. More than 185 doctors, dentists and nurses have died from Covid-19, professional associations say.
Since Sunday, Jakarta has been reporting more than 1,000 new cases a day — about a third of the national daily total — and Mr. Anies said the city’s hospitals were filling quickly with coronavirus patients.
He predicted that all hospital beds would be taken by early October and that intensive care units would be full by Sept. 25 if the city did not take immediate action to slow the spread of the virus.
In the neighboring city of Bekasi, another virus hot spot, officials were preparing the city’s stadium as an isolation center to house people who have tested positive for the coronavirus but do not have symptoms, said the mayor, Rahmat Effendi.
In Jakarta, where the city had reported nearly 50,000 cases and more than 1,300 deaths as of Thursday morning, the designated cemetery for coronavirus victims has been filling quickly and was expected to run out of room by mid-October.
Mr. Anies said the city was still working out details of restrictions on gatherings, travel, and prayers at mosques, always a sensitive issue in the predominantly Muslim country. Most schools have not reopened since they were shut down months ago — a particular challenge for rural schoolchildren who lack internet and cellphone service.
In other developments around the world:
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Days after AstraZeneca announced a global pause in late-stage trials for its coronavirus vaccine, the Serum Institute of India, which has partnered with the company, said on Thursday that it was also pausing trials in India. The institute had earlier said that the country’s drug regulators had not instructed it to pause domestic trials. India, which has had more than 4.4 million confirmed cases of the virus, said on Thursday that 95,735 new infections had been reported over the previous 24 hours, a single-day record.
Wuhan, the pandemic’s first epicenter, will resume international flights this month.
First pool parties, now international vacations.
The Chinese city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first detected, is one of many in the country that have been gradually returning to an almost pre-pandemic sense of normality. Wuhan’s water parks and night markets are packed elbow to elbow, buzzing as they did in the days before the authoritarian government imposed sweeping lockdowns.
The next step is resuming international flights. The first is a Sept. 16 T’way Airlines flight between Wuhan and Seoul, the South Korean capital, China’s state-run media reported on Thursday.
Several carriers are applying for permission to restart direct flights between Wuhan and cities such as Bangkok; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Hanoi, Vietnam; Singapore; and Tokyo, according to a report in People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party.
Thousands of infected travelers who left Wuhan in January, ahead of the Lunar New Year, helped to unwittingly spread the virus across the country and beyond. The industrial hub of 11 million people was placed under lockdown later that month.
Wuhan began to cautiously reopen in April, and other cities have since followed suit, even as experts warn that China may face a Covid-19 resurgence as the weather cools and people spend more time indoors. Earlier this month, Beijing restarted direct flights to Canada, Greece, Thailand and other countries.
Eerily empty this spring, Wuhan’s Tianhe International Airport processed up to 60,000 travelers a day last month, a record since the end of the lockdown, according to state media reports. And by late August, the airport had recovered 90 percent of its pre-pandemic volume of domestic flights compared with the same period last year.
On Thursday, China reported zero domestically transmitted cases for the 25th consecutive day. The Chinese mainland has had a total of almost 93,000 cases and 4,634 deaths, according to a New York Times database.
The new sound of Japanese sports: Silence.
What did our Tokyo bureau chief, Motoko Rich, hear when she attended a recent soccer match in Tokyo? Here’s what she wrote about going to the game, which before the pandemic would have been a boisterous experience:
As the players drove the ball down the field, I suddenly heard the distinct crinkle of a plastic bag a full four rows in front of me, where a man was pulling out a chicken drumstick to eat.
This was the sound of Japanese professional soccer in the era of the coronavirus.
While the major sports leagues in the United States and Europe are playing mostly before empty stands or cardboard cutouts, fans in Japan have been attending games since early July, after a four-month hiatus.
But there are trade-offs.
In normal times, Japanese fans are not only loud, they are also extremely orchestrated and utterly disciplined. Nonstop through a match, they sing, cheer, chant, bang drums and wave enormous team flags — a boisterous spectacle that often rivals the actual play on the field for entertainment value.
Now, most of those activities are banned for fear that people might be roused into a frenzy of shouting, with any spray becoming a vector for spreading the virus.
So when I attended a home match on a recent Sunday surrounded by nearly 4,600 fans of FC Tokyo, one of 18 teams in the top tier of the Japan Professional Football League, or J-League, the spectators were scrupulously quiet — except for an occasional crinkle of a food wrapper or a spontaneous burst of applause.
Reporting was contributed by Emily Cochrane, Emma Goldberg, Mike Ives, Claire Moses, Richard C. Paddock, Motoko Rich, Dera Menra Sijabat, Karan Deep Singh, Muktita Suhartono, Jin Wu and Elaine Yu.
