Seven states report highest coronavirus hospitalizations since pandemic began

It felt exceedingly treacherous and painstaking, getting Major League Baseball back on the field, some 3 1/2 months after it was effectively shuttered by a global pandemic, through a bitter and halting economic negotiation that still failed to deliver an agreement, and with seemingly each day bringing another body blow to the sport — in the form of a nasty letter from MLB to the players’ union or vice versa, or a fresh leak designed to embarrass the other side.

And then it was finally all over Tuesday night, and the sport had a date for the reopening of “spring” training camps (July 1) and a new Opening Day of July 23 or 24, nearly four months behind schedule. The season will be 60 games, by far the shortest in the sport’s modern history, followed by a postseason.

With uncanny timing, MarqueeTV, a performing-arts streaming service, debuted in this country in February. None of its leaders could have predicted the global crisis to come, but the bittersweet irony is that it created ideal conditions for Marquee’s high-definition dance, theater and opera offerings, available on demand.

Given the shutdowns and stay-at-home orders, the novel coronavirus pandemic “has been a game-changer,” says Marc Kirschner, a Marquee founder and head of product and innovation. March and April saw a five- to sixfold spike in subscriptions, he says.

Less than two weeks after beginning a phased reopening, Yosemite National Park in California announced the closure of several campgrounds on Tuesday amid concerns over the continuous spread of the novel coronavirus.

The park will no longer accept reservations at six campground sites through July, and 50 percent of Upper Pines, the largest of three campgrounds in the Yosemite Valley, will remain open, the Associated Press reported.

As of Tuesday evening, the National Park Service website still prominently displayed an alert announcing, “Yosemite is open.” Following a closure that lasted nearly three months, Yosemite reopened its 800 miles of park trails on June 11 to visitors with reservations. The decision to shut down the park, however, came after a surge of confirmed cases in California.

Washington state residents will be required to wear face coverings in public starting Friday, Gov. Jay Inslee (D) announced Tuesday.

The statewide mandate dictates that people older than 5 wear masks indoors in public spaces and outdoors when they are unable to maintain six feet of distance. The penalty is a misdemeanor citation. Exemptions may apply to people who are deaf or can’t wear a mask for medical reasons.

Washington is one of several states in the midst of a spike in new cases of the novel coronavirus. Its three highest days of new cases came in the past four days, according to data tracked by The Washington Post.

President Trump again referred to the novel coronavirus as “kung flu,” eliciting laughter and wild cheers from a young crowd in Arizona on Tuesday.

Trump was listing the different names he has heard for the virus, which has killed at least 119,000 Americans, during a speech for the student Republican group Turning Point Action.

“Wuhan. Wuhan was catching on, coronavirus, kung flu,” he said, repeating it as the crowd roared. “I could give you many, many names. Some people call it the Chinese flu, the China flu, they call it the China.”

SANTIAGO, Chile — It wasn’t that long ago that Chilean President Sebastián Piñera boasted that the country was ready for the novel coronavirus. “Far better prepared than Italy” is how he put it in March.

And after locking down the population, bolstering hospitals and testing aggressively, the country did appear to be faring well in the pandemic. With a comparatively advanced health-care system, it kept cases and deaths lower than in neighboring Brazil, Ecuador and Peru. By April, officials were touting plans to distribute a first-in-the-world “immunity passport,” enabling Chileans who had recovered from the virus to get back to work.

The Cook County Public Defender’s Office and an activist group filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the Chicago Police Department, claiming that officers have used the coronavirus pandemic as a ploy to prevent incarcerated people from communicating with lawyers.

Among those taken into custody by Chicago police from April 16 to June 5, a survey conducted by the public defender’s office found that 23 percent were not allowed to make phone calls, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The department’s guidelines state, however, that “arrestees will be provided access to a phone and be able to make a reasonable number of telephone calls to communicate with their attorney, family, or friends as soon as practicable upon being taken into custody.”

The federal government plans to end support of testing sites on June 30, including seven sites in Texas, where cases and hospitalizations are climbing rapidly.

The federal government plans to end support for two testing sites in Dallas, Talking Points Memo reports. Four of the sites, which conduct thousands of tests per day, are in Houston and the surrounding Harris County, the Houston Chronicle reports.

Texas reported 5,489 new cases Tuesday, its highest case count in a single day and far exceeding its previous record of 4,430 from Saturday, according to data collected by The Washington Post. Nearly 4,100 people in Texas are hospitalized with covid-19, up from 2,158 one week ago.