Covid-19 Live Updates: U.S. Hits a Record 121,000 Daily Cases

What does it look like when a country sets a record for coronavirus cases — and then breaks it again the next day?

The United States recorded at least 121,000 new infections on Thursday, a day after hitting 100,000 for the first time since the pandemic began, and for many Americans, fatalism was the order of the day.

“We knew it was just a matter of time,” said Matt Christensen.

Mr. Christensen was sitting in a minivan in Racine, Wis., his wife next to him and their three children in the back seat, waiting to be tested for the virus. Nearby, feverish and desperate, other people confined to their cars also waited.

On Thursday, as they waited, the coronavirus was spreading relentlessly across America, and America was speeding toward yet another record.

In a single day across America, from dawn to nightfall, it churned through homes, workplaces, hospitals, schools and laboratories.

In Cleveland, lab workers began another grinding day of processing coronavirus tests. In Minot, N.D., a hospital scrambled to find space for the crush of patients who came through the doors. And in Unionville, Conn., grieving relatives planned the funeral of a family’s 98-year-old matriarch, who died from the virus.

In the morning, governors began what is now a familiar routine: pleading in front of news cameras for Americans to do their part to stop the spread of the virus.

“This virus doesn’t care if we voted for Donald Trump, doesn’t care if we voted for Joe Biden,” Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio said two days after Americans went to the polls. “It’s coming after all of us.”

In Ohio, which set its own record Thursday, a giant fridge at the Cleveland Clinic glowed with rows and rows of coronavirus samples. Technicians shook test tubes and squinted at graphs on computer screens, trying to determine whether yet another patient had tested positive. “I work, I go home, I come back,” one lab supervisor said.

In Virginia, students in the Henry County Public Schools district were at work in their classes. But 22 staff members and students had tested positive, and hundreds more had been quarantined. So the superintendent went before the school board to recommend that the district revert to virtual learning until January. The vote was unanimous, and come Monday, the district’s schools will close.

In Minot, N.D., patients crammed an emergency room at Trinity Health, waiting to be admitted. The entire floor dedicated to coronavirus patients had no more available beds. Dr. Jeffrey Sather, the chief of staff, called other large hospitals around the state to see if he could send some patients there. But every hospital was also full.

Many on his staff were working overtime, and Dr. Sather said he was worried about all they were seeing every day. “They are witnessing people suffocate to death on a regular basis,” he said.

In Connecticut, Amanda Harper had always imagined her grandmother’s funeral as a full celebration of a life. The service for Juliette Marie Foley, 98, would have been at a church, followed by family time where loved ones would have pored over old photos and swapped stories.

But that was before the pandemic.

In October, Ms. Foley contracted the coronavirus. An avid baker and seamstress, she died on the last day of the month.

On Thursday afternoon, there were still details for the family to consider. Would the Zoom link to the funeral work? Could they keep those few attending in person safe?

“This pandemic has robbed us of the way we say goodbye,” said Ms. Harper.

By nightfall, the nation hurtled past the 100,000-case mark once again. Sixteen states set daily case records on Thursday, and three had death records. In 28 states, there have been more cases announced in the past week than in any other seven-day stretch.

A quarter of a million coronavirus infections have been reported at colleges and universities across the United States, according to a New York Times survey, as schools across the nation struggle to keep outbreaks in check.

The bulk of the cases have occurred since students returned for the fall semester, with more than 38,000 new cases reported in the past two weeks alone.

And the numbers are almost certainly an undercount.

The Times’s survey — which includes more than 1,700 American colleges and universities, including every four-year public institution and every private college that competes in N.C.A.A. sports — is believed to be the most comprehensive tally available. But the lack of a centralized national tracking system or consistent statewide data means the full toll is hard to capture.

When The Times last tallied campus cases on Oct. 22, the figure was 214,000. Now it is more than 252,000.

More than a third of U.S. universities welcomed students back in some capacity this fall.

Some of them have appeared to keep the virus in check, primarily through extensive testing programs, even as they try to provide some semblance of a normal college experience for their students.

But others have done less well, failing to enforce social distancing and other preventive measures in an environment that normally revolves around communal living, group activities, large social gatherings and in-person learning.

Many school officials blame students when there are spikes in cases, chastising them for failing to abide by the new rules that have transformed campus life in 2020.

At Syracuse University, school had barely opened when officials issued an open letter castigating a group of students who had thrown a large party and “selfishly jeopardized the very thing that so many of you claim to want from Syracuse University — that is, a chance at a residential college experience.”

Syracuse has reported 257 coronavirus cases since March.

Some students say administrators should have seen it coming when they chose to reopen in person.

“It’s very difficult to say whether, you know, it’s really on students for throwing these honestly reckless parties, or whether they’re just simply acting how college students are going to act in these kind of situations,” Dylan Brooks, a senior at Arizona State University told his school newspaper. “Of course, if you’re bringing A.S.U. college students back to A.S.U., this is how they’re going to act.”

The school, which has 44,000 students, has reported 2,518 cases.

The coronavirus has been responsible for at least 80 deaths on college campuses this year. While most of those deaths were reported in the spring and involved school employees, several students have died in recent weeks as a result of the virus.

As case numbers skyrocket across the nation, that number is expected to rise.

A nasal spray that blocks the absorption of the coronavirus completely protected ferrets it was tested on, according to a small study released Thursday by an international team of scientists. The study, which was limited to animals and has not yet been peer-reviewed, was assessed by several health experts at the request of The New York Times.

If the spray, which the scientists described as nontoxic and stable, is proved to work in humans, it could provide a new way to fight the pandemic, with a daily spritz up the nose acting like a vaccine.

“Having something new that works against the coronavirus is exciting,” said Dr. Arturo Casadevall, the chairman of immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who was not involved in the study. “I could imagine this being part of the arsenal.”

The work has been underway for months by scientists from Columbia University Medical Center in New York, Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, Cornell University and the University of Campania in Italy. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Columbia University Medical Center.

The spray, which attacks the virus directly, contains a lipopeptide, a cholesterol particle linked to a chain of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. This particular lipopeptide exactly matches a stretch of amino acids in the spike protein of the virus, which the pathogen uses to attach to a human airway or lung cell.

Before a virus can inject its RNA into a cell, the spike must effectively unzip, exposing two chains of amino acids, in order to fuse to the cell wall. As the spike zips back up to complete the process, the lipopeptide in the spray inserts itself, latching on to one of the spike’s amino acid chains and preventing the virus from attaching.

“It is like you are zipping a zipper but you put another zipper inside, so the two sides cannot meet,” said Matteo Porotto, a microbiologist at Columbia University and one of the paper’s authors.

The work was described in a paper posted to the preprint server bioRxiv Thursday morning, and has been submitted to the journal Science for peer review.

Ferrets are used by scientists studying flu, SARS and other respiratory diseases because they can catch viruses through the nose much as humans do, although they also infect each other by contact with feces or by scratching and biting.

The protective spray attaches to cells in the nose and lungs and lasts about 24 hours, Dr. Anne Moscona, a pediatrician and microbiologist at Columbia and co-author of the study.

“If it works this well in humans,” she said, “you could sleep in a bed with someone infected or be with your infected kids and still be safe.”

Global Roundup

China’s foreign ministry issued a strong warning on Friday about the danger of imported coronavirus cases, while imposing further stringent limits on almost any arrivals of international travelers.

Wang Wenbin, the foreign ministry spokesman, said that despite a requirement of a negative nucleic acid test for coronavirus infections before travelers can board a flight to China, more and more people have been showing up with the virus. The number of imported cases grew 45 percent in October to 515 cases, compared with September, he said.

“The epidemic situation abroad has deteriorated lately, and the risk of imported epidemics facing China continues to increase,” Mr. Wang said at his daily news briefing.

On Friday, Chinese embassies in countries including Ethiopia, France, Italy and Russia prohibited almost all travel to China, except for Chinese nationals. That followed similar prohibitions imposed on Thursday on travel from Bangladesh, Belgium, Britain, India and the Philippines.

Since late spring, China has barred foreign tourists and business travelers, and has said that foreign residents of China could only return with special permission from a Chinese consulate or embassy. The rules this week have been aimed at blocking the return of foreign residents who have recently obtained the necessary special permission but have not yet arrived in the country.

China has also introduced a rule this week that Chinese nationals and any foreign residents still eligible to return to the country must take two tests in the 48 hours before flying and obtain approval of the results from a Chinese Embassy or consulate. These travelers must have negative results not only on a nucleic acid virus test, but also a blood test for antibodies, which measures whether someone has previously been infected or seriously exposed to the virus.

Responding to international criticism that requiring an antibody test is excessive, Mr. Wang said that nucleic acid testing by itself was not accurate enough.

He also defended another new rule this week, that the nucleic acid and antibody tests must be passed at each transit stop on a passenger’s trip to China. Mr. Wang said that nearly half of the imported cases in China involved people who got sick after passing a nucleic acid test shortly before traveling. Introducing another round of testing could catch some of these travelers before they reach China.

In other developments around the world:

• Italy is locking down six regions in the country’s deeply infected north and highly vulnerable, and poorer, south. The measures, which start Friday, are the most drastic since a nationwide lockdown in March.

• The Australian state of Victoria on Friday reported its seventh consecutive day of no locally transmitted virus cases, suggesting a three-month lockdown in the state’s capital of Melbourne had successfully contained a second wave outbreak. Victoria’s premier, Daniel Andrews, said the state remained on track to ease travel restrictions between Melbourne and other parts of the state on Sunday, but he urged people to remain vigilant.

• People in Germany bought 139 percent more toilet paper in the third week of October than they did in the months before the pandemic last year, according to government data published on Thursday. Despite the uptick, the figures suggest that most people have overcome the impulse to stockpile, which Germans call “hamster buying.” The country tightened coronavirus restrictions this week.

The N.F.L. has fined the Las Vegas Raiders $500,000 and their head coach, Jon Gruden, an additional $150,000 and has taken away a late-round draft pick next year because of repeated violations of the league’s coronavirus protocols, according to a league employee who was not authorized to discuss the penalties publicly.

The team, which had already been fined for violations earlier in the season, is likely to appeal the latest penalties, the employee said.

Thursday’s fines and the loss of a draft pick were by far the strongest punishment yet against an N.F.L. team, as the league has tried to push through a season while the coronavirus continues to rage in many areas of the United States.

The N.F.L. has increased the restrictions on where and how players, coaches and staff members can move around in and outside team facilities, and it warned teams last month that violations would result in increasingly stiffer penalties, including the loss of draft picks and potentially the forfeiting of games.

The Tennessee Titans have had the worst outbreak in the league, with at least two dozen players, coaches and staff members testing positive in a period that forced the postponement of two games and required a half-dozen other teams to juggle their schedules. The league fined the Titans $350,000 for their handling of the outbreak. But it did not take away any draft picks.

Last month, Gruden was fined $100,000 and the team was fined $250,000 because the coach had not worn his face covering properly on the sideline during a game. The team was also fined $50,000 for allowing an unauthorized visitor in the locker room.

The American economy gained 638,000 jobs last month, a sign the labor market continues to heal slowly as a resurgence in the coronavirus threatens future growth.

The unemployment rate fell sharply to 6.9 percent, from 7.9 percent in September, the Labor Department reported.

Unemployment rate

By Ella Koeze·Unemployment rates are seasonally adjusted.·Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

The overall job gain would have been larger without the loss of 147,000 temporary census positions.

The nation has recovered a little over half of the 22 million jobs lost after the pandemic struck in March, but the gains have softened in recent months. The economy added almost 1.8 million jobs in July and 1.5 million in August, but the figure fell to 672,000 in September.

Among the big contributors to the October increase were two industries hit hard by the pandemic: food and drink establishments, which added 192,000 jobs, and retailing, which picked up 104,000. But cooler temperatures and caution about shopping amid surging coronavirus cases threaten those gains.

“It’s better than expected, but we’re starting to see headwinds,” Diane Swonk, chief economist at the accounting firm Grant Thornton in Chicago, said of the October report. “The drop in the unemployment rate is welcome news, but there are still over 11 million unemployed workers.”

Even as the unemployment rate has come down, joblessness for many has become more prolonged. The Labor Department said the number of long-term unemployed — those without work for 27 weeks or more — grew to 3.6 million in October, an increase of 1.2 million.

Millions of unemployed workers have had a harder time paying bills since an emergency federal program paying $600 a week in additional benefits expired at the end of July. Another set of federal jobless benefits will last only through the end of the year.

Job losses are more likely to be permanent than earlier in the pandemic

Share of jobs lost each month that are temporary layoffs

By Ella Koeze·Data is seasonally adjusted.·Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning research group, estimates that more than 30 million workers have lost jobs or had their hours or pay reduced in the coronavirus-related downturn.

With the Senate remaining in Republican hands, as election returns suggest, any further relief will probably be more modest than the multitrillion-dollar package that seemed likely if a “blue wave” had given Democrats control of Congress and the White House. As a result, Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at Northern Trust in Chicago, has cut his estimate of growth next year by a full percentage point.

“The good news is that the U.S. job market is healing,” Mr. Tannenbaum said. “But full recuperation may take awhile.”

Chocolate shops and stationery stores were busy as usual. Universities held in-person lectures. And workers crowded into some offices and factories, often with nothing more than a bottle of communal hand sanitizer to protect them from the rampant spread of the coronavirus.

In England on Thursday, the first hours of Lockdown 2.0, as local newspapers called it, looked very little like a lockdown at all.

The situation exposed the enormous difficulties of European governments, struck by a second wave of the coronavirus, as they try to put the genie back in the bottle after months of encouraging people to flock back to offices and pubs.

Since the spring, when lawmakers with little dissent ordered people to stay home, the political consensus around lockdown measures has collapsed. As a result, England’s new shutdown rules were shot through with loopholes, and companies openly flouted what relatively lenient restrictions were in place. At the same time, citizens and scientists alike fretted about the virus spreading unchecked for much of the winter.

“It feels very much like a lockdown in name only,” said Steve Gremo, a software developer in Kent, in southeast England. “In March, it seemed like the country came to a complete halt. It was not the same vibe this morning at all.”

The latest shutdown — under which pubs, restaurants and other nonessential shops were supposed to close, but schools, universities and many workplaces were left open — is slated to end on Dec. 2. But many scientists doubt that four weeks of spotty restrictions will be enough to stamp out the virus, or that the government will have done enough by then to revamp its contact tracing system to allow officials to keep track of the virus’s spread for the rest of the winter.

Despite skepticism from scientists, Prime Minister Boris Johnson insisted on Thursday that the new restrictions would work.

“This is not a repeat of the spring,” he said. “Four weeks is enough for these measures to make a real impact.”

But the busy subways, motorways, shops and workplaces that were in evidence across England on Thursday made plain that companies were reluctant to take the same precautions they did during the first lockdown.

The coronavirus continued its deadly march in Eastern Europe on Friday. Poland, where the daily average of new cases is above 21,000, saw its highest daily death count of the pandemic — 445 — and admitted the first patient to its new field hospital at a stadium in Warsaw. Romania, which passed 10,000 daily cases for the first time, announced that it would close schools and implement an overnight curfew. And Hungary has declared a “state of danger” this week, giving its prime minister the power to rule by decree to combat the virus, though restaurants and stores are still open.

In Romania, new measures are set to go into effect Monday, including closing shops with the exception of pharmacies by 9 p.m. and requiring masks in all public spaces. Fairs and indoor markets will be closed until early December, and employees are being encouraged to work from home. Schools will move entirely online and Romanians will be required to fill out forms if they leave their homes after the nighttime curfew comes into effect.

“The measures that have been taken so far are no longer enough,” President Klaus Iohannis said on Thursday in announcing the new restrictions.

Romania, which has recorded at least 287,000 cases of the virus and 7,663 related deaths, has one of the least developed health care systems in the European Union, and there are concerns over whether the country can handle the rising caseload.

In Poland, where demonstrators have been protesting a newly passed near-total ban on abortion, the prime minister blamed protesters for the coronavirus situation. The country announced new regulations this week. Starting Saturday, all cultural institutions, such as museums, theaters and cinemas, as well as nonessential shops in commercial centers will be closed. There will be limits on the numbers of customers in other shops, and hotels will be allowed to accept only customers traveling on business. All schooling will be online.

The country has a seven-day average above 21,000 cases, and the prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, has said a new national quarantine is possible.

In Hungary, an official with the Hungarian Chamber of Doctors warned that without stricter measures to limit the virus, the situation in the country may in weeks resemble that of Italy earlier this year, according to an interview published Friday. Hungary’s daily death toll is averaging more than 70, but topped 100 on Friday.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday that the government expected to need some 2,240 intensive care beds by Nov. 21 and 4,480 by Dec. 10, adding that this number represents the maximum capacity of the health care system. On Thursday, Hungary’s foreign minister Peter Szijjarto, who recently tested positive for the virus, announced that the country would start importing a coronavirus vaccine from Russia for final testing and licensing in December.

Since Hawaii welcomed tourists back in mid-October, allowing them to skip its 14-day quarantine as long as they had a negative coronavirus test, more than 100,000 people have rushed to the islands from mainland states, exciting state officials, some hoteliers, airlines and local business owners, who for seven months have watched the state’s economy grind to a halt.

Instead of the quarantine, the islands began accepting a preflight coronavirus test for entry under a program it is calling Safe Travels. The state is only accepting what are known as nucleic acid amplification tests processed by specially certified laboratories, and test results from certain trusted testing and travel partners, including some airlines.

“Hawaii is at the vanguard of what travel will look like for the next year or so as we reopen,” said Avi Mannis, senior vice president of marketing at Hawaiian Airlines, one of a handful of airlines that began offering pre-travel Covid-19 tests in October.

The surge of arrivals — 8,000 of them on the first day pretesting was available — presented an opportunity to test out new protocols for travelers that could help determine how to reopen travel internationally. If Hawaii’s reopening goes well, the belief is that preflight testing could become widespread. And on the islands, if hotels can figure out how to deal with growing occupancy, the same thing could be done worldwide.

But what travel industry actors view as an opportunity to reopen safely and pave a way forward, many locals and residents view as putting them in harm’s way with untested protocols and allowing people who might have the coronavirus onto the islands.

“It feels like at every point that tourism gets prioritized,” said Landon Ton, a bartender and waiter in Waikiki. “It feels, whether intentionally or not, like we are the guinea pigs for tourism. Like our leaders and the airlines are saying ‘Can we safely reopen tourism or not? Well, let’s see if Hawaii survives. If it does, let’s keep going. If it doesn’t, probably a lot of Pacific Islanders have gotten sick and suffered.’”

Mr. Ton said that on a recent hike near his home, he saw several groups of tourists heading to popular Koko Head without masks on, making him nervous that if any of them had the coronavirus they could pass it on to locals.

“Tourism is terrorism to me right now,” he said. “I’d ask tourists to stay home for now, if they can. You could test negative, but get the virus afterward or you could have it and not realize. Why not skip this vacation for now?”

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   Chandan Khanna/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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   Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

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   Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

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   Brandon Bell/Reuters

Some of the president’s supporters marched through Miami on Thursday night, as others engaged in a tense standoff with an anti-Trump protesters outside a government building in Phoenix. Arizona election officials were inside, counting votes through the night.