June 22 coronavirus news

As the coronavirus pandemic surges in states that embraced his calls for aggressive early openings, US President Donald Trump is mocking the very measures that might mitigate a crisis about which he is constantly in denial.

Trump said at his weekend rally that he had told his staff to slow down testing for the disease, which has now killed nearly 120,000 Americans, to hide the discovery of more cases.

Claims by his advisers that he was joking hardly lessen the questionable motives behind the remark.

Trump has meanwhile also helped to turn the wearing of masks, which is proven to slow transmission of the disease, into a culture war issue. And his rally in Oklahoma on Saturday night was a rebuke of the notion of social distancing -- even though, ironically, his smaller-than-expected crowd would have made such practices possible.

Cases spike: Health experts warn that spikes in infections in states like Florida and Arizona -- both of which recorded new highs in daily infection rates over the weekend -- are being driven by the public's waning willingness to avoid large gatherings and a reticence to wear masks.

Long-term threat: The President's poor example represents a typical effort to divide Americans and highlight divisions over specific issues for his own political gain. But in the long run, apart from putting thousands of lives at risk, it is counterproductive, since a more stringent effort to avoid rises in infections as states open up would likely promote the fast economic recovery on which Trump is banking a reelection campaign that has slipped into trouble in recent weeks.

Read the full analysis:

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Trump's 'kidding' on testing exposes his negligence as virus spikes

India has recorded more than 12,000 daily new coronavirus cases for the fifth consecutive day, according to the country's health ministry.

The ministry said on Monday it had registered 14,821 new cases, bringing the nationwide total to 425,282. 

India also recorded 445 new deaths -- the second-highest daily jump in coronavirus deaths within a 24-hour period.

In the past 8 days, India has recorded more than 104,000 new cases and 4,500 deaths.

The number of new coronavirus cases dropped into the single digits in Beijing on Sunday, with nine out of China's 18 new confirmed cases coming from the city, according to the National Health Commission (NHC).

The Chinese capital has been trying to contain the spread of a fresh outbreak that emerged from its largest wholesale food market earlier this month.

Mass testing has been rolled out across the city of 20 million, with mask-donning residents forming long lines at makeshift testing centers in sweltering summer heat.

Beijing authorities said they had collected samples from more than 2.29 million people as of Saturday for coronavirus tests.

There are currently 2,083 testing stations operating at 474 testing sites set up across the city, according to municipal authorities.

Since the new outbreak, Beijing's testing capacity has more than doubled, increasing from 100,000 to over 230,000 tests per day at 124 facilities, Gao Xiaojun, spokesman for the Beijing Health Commission, told a press briefing on Sunday.

If the samples taken from five individuals are combined together and tested in a single tube -- a method known as "pool testing," Beijing can get 1 million people tested daily, Gao added.

The method was adopted in Wuhan, the original epicenter of the pandemic, in May, when the central Chinese city conducted 6.5 million coronavirus tests in just nine days to prevent a second wave of infections.

PepsiCo shut down a factory in Beijing on Sunday after reporting eight cases of coronavirus, according to a company spokesperson.

Two of the workers confirmed of coronavirus had recently visited the Xinfadi market, a sprawling wholesale food market at the center of the capital's fresh coronavirus outbreak.

The spokesperson said 480 staff workers in the closed factory, along with 87 people who were in close contact with them, have been put in quarantine and tested for coronavirus. So far, none of them has been tested positive. 

The factory, which produces potato chips, has been sealed for sterilization. 

In its statement, PepsiCo said none of its bottling factories in China, including the ones in Beijing, have reported any coronavirus cases.  

Fiji is planning to create a travel bubble with Australia and New Zealand, the South Pacific island nation's leader said on Sunday.

Prime Minister Josaia "Frank" Voreqe Bainimarama told parliament his plan for a "post-Covid society" included a slow resumption of the tourism industry the country relies heavily on.

"While Australia and New Zealand work out their trans-Tasman bubble, Fiji's equal -- or arguably, greater -- success against the virus puts us in a position to take the lead in the Pacific," Bainimarama said. "We're working on our own bubble -- a Bula Bubble -- between Fiji, New Zealand and Australia."

Bula is a greeting that means hello or welcome in Fijian.

How it would work:

The United States reported 25,020 new coronavirus cases and 250 deaths on Sunday, according to Johns Hopkins University's tally.

As of Sunday, the country had recorded at least 2,279,875 cases and 119,969 deaths.

The totals includes cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as repatriated cases. 

CNN's interactive map is tracking US cases:

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Tracking Covid-19 cases in the US

The Bulgarian tennis star Grigor Dimitrov announced on Sunday that he had tested positive for coronavirus, just a day after playing in an international tournament.

He added that he was now recovering at home.

On Saturday, he had played in the Adria Tour tournament in Zadar, Croatia. Last week, he also played in the Belgrade, Serbia leg on the same tour.

The NBA Board of Governors says it is offering basketball players a ring with embedded electronics which supposedly can predict symptoms of coronavirus -- but some doctors are lukewarm about its potential.

The $299 Oura ring is designed to monitor sleep, pulse, movement, heart activity and temperature, according to the company’s website.

But there’s not much information yet on how well the device works.

Other doctors told CNN said there was too little solid information about the device for them to comment on it.

There is a little evidence to suggest that pulse and temperature can change before people notice symptoms of infections such as influenza, and Long said this could raise the potential to collect data on large groups of people -- but warned that the ring shouldn't be seen as a guaranteed protective measure.

“Just don’t let it give us a false sense of security. Don’t stop wearing your mask because your Oura ring says you’re okay. You know, don't skip testing because everybody's Oura ring says they’re fine," she said.

The reproduction number of the coronavirus has risen sharply in Germany, said the country's center for disease control, the Robert Koch Institute, on Sunday. 

This figure, also called the R-number, stands at 2.88 in Germany.

An R-number of 1 means that each person with coronavirus infects one other person on average.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has repeatedly warned that the country must keep the R-number below 1 to contain the disease, and that a rise in the rate could see restrictions reinforced.

This massive leap in the national R-number is due to a local outbreak at a meat processing plant in the town of Gutersloh, said the Robert Koch Institute. There are now at least 1,331 positive cases at the factory, said town authorities on Sunday.

“Since case numbers in Germany are generally low, these local outbreaks have a relatively strong influence on the value of the reproduction number,” the Robert Koch Institute said in its daily report.