Coronavirus live updates: California ramps up hospital capacity as cases surge

Bed Bath & Beyond said Wednesday it will close 200 of its namesake stores over two years, as it works toward getting back to profitability against a backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic. Bed Bath — which also owns the chains buybuy Baby, Christmas Tree Shops and Harmon Face Values — said these actions should generate annual cost savings of between $250 million and $350 million, excluding related one-time costs. “We saw there were a number of stores dragging us down,” Chief Executive Mark Tritton told CNBC in a phone interview. “We will continue to look at the rest of our concept doors, now that we have established the data criteria.” 

The company made the announcement as it reported fiscal first-quarter earnings, where its sales tumbled nearly 50%, even as online sales surged more than 100% during April and May with consumers stocking up on cleaning supplies and home decor. Bed Bath shares fell nearly 10% in after-hours trading on the news. 

According to Tritton, as Bed Bath’s stores are reopening during the pandemic, many are performing ahead of the retailer’s internal expectations. Consumers have moved from stocking up on cleaning supplies, water filters and coffee, to bigger-ticket items like home decor, bedding and accessories for the backyard, he said. Bed Bath is not offering a 2020 outlook at this time. −Lauren Thomas

Flight attendants are set to bear the brunt of what’s expected to be deep staff cuts at United Airlines as the carrier expects no quick recovery in air travel because of the pandemic. The Chicago-based carrier warned close to 40% of its staff, or 36,000 employees, that they could potentially be furloughed on Oct. 1, when the terms of federal aid run out.

Those federally-mandated warnings are going out to more than 15,000 flight attendants, or around 60% of the cabin crew members, United’s biggest work group.

Furloughs start with the most junior employees. But because United says it will need to reduce jobs in such high numbers, flight attendants safe from furloughs would had to have started at the carrier around mid-November 1996 or earlier, according to a staff memo.

Warnings of possible furloughs also are going out to more than 11,000 airport operations staff, 5,400 mechanics and technicians, 2,250 pilots and more than 800 in catering division. —Leslie Josephs

California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced during his news briefing that the state now has healthcare capacity to treat 50,000 Covid-19 patients as it continues to see a surge in daily number of cases and hospitalizations. 

When comparing California’s hospital data from March to that of July, the governor said the state is more ready and prepared to manage a surge in patients. It has built alternate care sites, such as Sleep Train Arena, established new hospital capacity such as Seton and deployed federal medical stations, according to Newsom.

He also said California’s personal protective equipment (PPE) inventory has grown tremendously since March. The state has 232 million procedure masks and 46 million N95 masks in stock. 

“We’re still in the process of procuring more masks but we’ve never been better positioned,” Newsom said. 

California reported 11,694 new cases on July 7, a record-high surge in the number of new cases per day. However, the governor noted that Wednesday’s case number is not an accurate depiction of a statewide daily increase as it includes a backlog of cases reported from laboratories in Los Angeles county. 

Newsom also announced that the number of hospitalizations due to Covid-19 is increasing. Over the last two weeks, California has seen a 44% increase in hospitalizations and 34% increase in intensive care unit (ICU) admissions. 

As California prepares for a spike in coronavirus patients, it added three new counties to the monitoring list for a total of 26. Approximately a week ago, there were 19 counties on the list, according to Newsom. —Jasmine Kim

More Americans traveled for Independence Day than predicted, but rising or falling Covid-19 infection rates impacted how many trips each state saw July 3 to 5. Arrivalist, a New York travel research firm, had estimated nearly 37 million of us would hit the road last weekend. That would have been an 11% drop compared to July 4, 2019. In fact, trips were down just 9% compared to last year.

Whether or not Covid-19 cases are falling or rising in a given state contributed to how many trips residents were willing to take, Arrivalist found. States where new Covid-19 cases are on the rise saw travel rates 10% below the national average, whereas those where diagnoses have leveled off nearly doubled the amount of travel they saw over Memorial Day weekend. — Kenneth Kiesnoski

Covid-19 cases increase for younger Californians

As coronavirus cases surge in California, younger people appear to be getting infected more in recent weeks than during the initial outbreak, according to new data from the California Department of Public Health.

In California, confirmed cases more than doubled in the last month, according to data from John Hopkins University with about two-thirds of California’s new infections among people ages 18 to 49, CNBC’s John Schoen reports. In March, only about half of California’s infections were in this younger age group. –Suzanne Blake

Universal Pictures has postponed the releases of “Candyman,” “The Forever Purge,” “Halloween Kills,” and “Halloween Ends.” The move comes as the number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. has skyrocketed in recent weeks. 

“Candyman” will now arrive in theaters on Oct. 16; “The Forever Purge” will be pushed to July 9, 2021; “Halloween Kills” is now slated for Oct. 15, 2021; and “Halloween Ends” will reach theaters on Oct. 14, 2022.

The move is not unprecedented. Disney and Warner Bros. have continued to pun the releases of “Mulan” and “Tenet” into August, as concerns about whether movie theaters will be able to open rises, and Sony Pictures has postponed the majority of its film releases until 2021.

Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of Universal Pictures and CNBC.

Out of 100 Apple retail stores closed around the world at the end of last week, 92 were located in the United States, suggesting that Apple sees a riskier retail environment in its home country versus the rest of the world.

Last week was the first time that more Apple stores closed than re-opened, according to analysis from Morgan Stanley. Previously, Apple had been reopening many locations with social distancing, mandatory masking and curb-side pickup or service appointment options. Apple stores are often in major malls or shopping centers, making it closely watched sign of how smoothly and where retail operations can restart amid the pandemic. — Kif Leswing

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has signed an executive order requiring everyone to wear face masks outdoors when social distancing is not possible. 

“Requiring masks outdoors is a step, frankly that I hoped we would not have to take … But unfortunately we have been seeing a backslide in compliance,” he said during a press briefing. “The weather has gotten warmer and not surprisingly as a result, our rate of infection has similarly crept up.”

Exceptions to the rule apply to individuals who are eating and drinking at an outdoor dining establishment, those who cannot wear a face covering for medical reasons and children under the age of two years old, according to Murphy.

The governor first issued an order on April 8 requiring customers and workers at essential businesses to wear face coverings. According to the guidance, businesses must provide masks and gloves for their employees. If a customer refuses to wear a cloth face covering for non-medical reasons, businesses are not allowed to let them in. —Jasmine Kim

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is calling out President Donald Trump for pressuring state officials to reopen schools this fall, saying the federal government does not have any authority to do so.

“School reopenings are a state decision. Period. That is the law, and that is the way we’re going to proceed. It’s not up to the president of the United States,” Cuomo said during a press briefing.

He gave a brief timeline on the decision-making process. The governor said he will announce the state’s decision on whether schools will open in August after thoroughly reviewing public health data and reopening plans from local school districts.

Cuomo said he has been consulting with educators and others on how schools should reopen in September. By July 13, the state hopes to finalize its guidance so that local school districts can submit their reopening plans by the end of the month. Between Aug. 1 to Aug. 7, New York will make an announcement on its decision, he said. —Jasmine Kim

United Airlines is warning some 36,000 employees that they could potentially be furloughed this fall, as hopes for a turnaround in air travel demand fades with increased coronavirus infections and state travel restrictions.

The possible job cuts would take effect officially on Oct. 1, when the terms expire on $25 billion in federal payroll that United, Delta, American and other airlines received to soften the blow from coronavirus. Federal law requires employers to give staff notice about possible layoffs or temporary furloughs 60 days in advance.

The staff reductions, equal to more than a third of United’s workforce, would apply to front-line workers like flight attendants, mechanics and pilots as demand, and as a result flights, remain reduced because of the pandemic.

The airline is trying to reduce headcount through voluntary measures like early retirement and buyouts before turning to job cuts.

“The United Airlines projected furlough numbers are a gut punch, but they are also the most honest assessment we’ve seen on the state of the industry,” said Sara Nelson, a flight attendant for the airline and president of its labor union, the Association of Flight Attendants. United said around 15,000 flight attendants, about 60% of United’s cabin crew members, could face furloughs. —Leslie Josephs

The U.S. has reported 3,016,515 cases of coronavirus and at least 131,666 people have died from the virus, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University.

The U.S. remains the hardest hit country in the world, making up 25% of all positive cases worldwide, followed by Brazil, India and Russia. Twenty-four percent of all deaths from the virus worldwide have been reported in the U.S.

President Donald Trump said Tuesday he thought the nation was “in a good place,” contradicting White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci who warned “we are still knee deep in the first wave.”  

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, said that while many nations have curbed the spread of Covid-19 or eliminated it outright, Trump has failed to take responsibility and demonstrate leadership. —Spencer Kimball

President Donald Trump is threatening to withhold federal funding for schools if they do not reopen for in-person classes in the fall.

Trump criticized CDC guidelines for reopening schools as tough, expensive and impractical. Those guidelines include keeping students six feet apart in classrooms, closing common areas and updating ventilation systems. 

On Tuesday, the president said he would pressure governors to open schools. 

“We’re very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools, to get them open. It’s very important. It’s very important for our country,” Trump said during a White House event. “It’s very important for the well-being of the student and the parents. So we’re going to be putting a lot of pressure on: Open your schools in the fall.”

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told governors on a conference call Tuesday that partial re-openings combined with in-person classes were unacceptable. 

“Ultimately, it’s not a matter of if schools need to open, it’s a matter of how,” DeVos said “School[s] must reopen, they must be fully operational.”

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday the nation’s largest school system would not fully re-open in the fall. Most students will attend in-person classes two or three days a week and learn the rest of the week from home. —Spencer Kimball, Christina Wilkie

Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego is calling for the federal government to support increased testing in the nation’s fifth largest city as a surge in coronavirus cases in the Arizona capital overwhelms hospitals and health-care workers there. 

Gallego said Phoenix is the largest city in the U.S. where the federal government hasn’t opened up a large testing site yet. The mayor said the city is struggling to keep up with demand even as it limits testing to the sickest patients and health-care workers. 

“This weekend I went to a testing site where people had waited over eight hours,” Gallego told MSNBC. “I saw a man who was sweating and struggling to breathe, try to refill his gas tank because he’d run out of fuel on our city street. If anyone looks at that and doesn’t want to do better for him, then I just don’t understand it.”

Gallego said she asked for increased testing months ago, but the federal government told her Phoenix did not have enough cases to justify opening a mass testing site at the time. Today,  Maricopa County where Phoenix is located has more than 70,000 positive cases total, the overwhelming majority of the more than 108,000 cases reported in Arizona. At least 1,963 people in Arizona have died from the virus. Gallego said Phoenix has already run out of hospital beds and nurses and doctors are exhausted. 

“They would like more resources,” she said. “They didn’t go into medicine to decide who lives and who dies. This is the United States of America, we should do better.” —Michelle Gao

The mayor of Florida’s most populous county is blaming the surge in coronavirus cases there on young people ignoring social distancing guidelines and meeting up in groups as the region reopened its economy. 

Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez told MSNBC the percentage of people testing positive for the virus has jumped from 8% to more than 20%. Gimenez pointed to the Memorial Day holiday, young people socializing in groups and recent protests as contributing factors to the spike. 

“This really was driven by young people going back to being young people, and partying, getting together, and it started to spread really fast among the young, and then it started to spread obviously with their parents and their grandparents,” Gimenez said.

Gimenez said people flouted rules aimed at ensuring a safe reopening of the economy. Miami-Dade ordered everyone to wear masks in public spaces last week in an effort to slow the spread of the virus, but Gimenez said some people still are not listening. 

“People are still going out, they’re still socializing, they’re still getting together with people that are maybe friends, but with a high degree of positivity that we have here in this county, you’re more than likely to encounter somebody who has Covid-19, doesn’t even know they have it, and is spreading it to other people,” Gimenez said. “That’s why we need to keep our masks on, keep our distance, and follow the rules.”

Gimenez’s remarks come as Covid-19 cases have surged in recent days in Florida. On Saturday, Florida reported 11,445 new cases, the highest single day total for the state since the pandemic began. —Alex Harring

New York City public schools, the nation’s largest district, will not fully reopen for in-person class this fall, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced. 

De Blasio said the “vast majority” of the district’s 1.1 million students will go to class two to three days each week, while participating in remote instruction on the other days. 

“Basically, this blended model — this kind of split schedule model — is what we can do under current conditions,” de Blasio said, citing the need to maintain social distancing.

“We all know remote learning is not perfect, but we’ve also seen a lot kids benefit gratefully from it during these last months, and we know we’ll be able to do it even better in the months ahead.” —Kevin Stankiewicz

The retail industry is grappling with what the back-to-school and back-to-college shopping season might look like in 2020.

For many companies, this can be the second-largest selling opportunity annually, behind the winter holidays. But the coronavirus crisis has entirely disrupted that. Now, 66% of parents are anxious about sending their kids to crowded classrooms again this fall due to the pandemic, according to an annual back-to-school survey by Deloitte, which surveyed 1,200 parents online from May 29 to June 5. Meanwhile, only 43% of parents polled felt the recent at-home education their children received during the crisis prepared them for the next grade level. 

Total back-to-school spending in the U.S. is expected to amount to $28.1 billion, or $529 per household, according to Deloitte. That would be relatively flat from 2019. Parents are expected to spend more on tech, like computers, and less on apparel and traditional school supplies. 

Many parents, teachers and students still don’t know what going back to school is going to look like themselves, and so they could be holding off on any big purchases, analysts say. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday that the system’s public schools — which educate more than 1.1 million kids — in September will welcome most students back just two or three days a week, to ensure social distancing. —Lauren Thomas

Stocks opened slightly higher as investors weighed the latest U.S. coronavirus data and its impact on the economic recovery. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 66 points, or 0.2%. The S&P 500 climbed 0.4% while the Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.6%, reports CNBC’s Fred Imbert and Maggie Fitzgerald. —Melodie Warner

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has said he tested positive for coronavirus but expressed optimism he will recover by using hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug previously promoted by President Donald Trump that has not been proven effective against Covid-19.

Bolsonaro said in a press conference that his fever subsided, which he attributed to the hydroxychloroquine, the Associated Press reported. Brazil has had more than 1.5 million infections and 65,000 deaths from the virus, and Bolsonaro has been criticized for his approach to the virus as he has been seen shaking hands and at times without a mask. —Alex Harring

Hundreds of Walgreens stores will soon have a doctor office, along with a pharmacist. The pandemic has inspired the drugstore chain to focus on another feature of the expanded health-care offering: Telemedicine.

Walgreens and primary-care company VillageMD struck a deal to open doctor offices in 500 to 700 stores over the next five years. Patients can visit the clinics in person — or they can request a virtual visit around the clock. The two companies are integrating their technology.

Even before the pandemic, Walgreens was experimenting with new business models. For example, it’s testing a small-format pharmacy. It piloted the new primary-care model in the Houston area. VillageMD CEO Tim Barry said use of telehealth surged from single-digits to more than 80% because of the pandemic. He said it’s now about 50%. —Melissa Repko

The continent of Africa has recorded more than 500,000 coronavirus cases, according to data compiled by Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with nearly 12,000 related deaths.

Across the continent of approximately 1.2 billion people, South Africa has recorded by far the highest number of Covid-19 infections, accounting for over 215,000 cases, while Egypt has confirmed more than 77,000 cases.

The World Health Organization has previously expressed concern that Africa has seen a rising number of coronavirus cases and fatalities as a result of the pandemic. The global health body has since urged governments across the continent to take effective measures to contain the spread of the virus as countries resume commercial flight operations. —Sam Meredith

The U.S. reported about 60,021 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, an all-time high single-day increase, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Daily new cases fell below 50,000 in recent days, though some public health officials have warned there could be a backlog of reporting due to the July Fourth holiday weekend. The U.S. has reported about 51,383 new cases on average over the past seven days, up nearly 24.5% compared with a week ago, according to a CNBC analysis of data collected by Hopkins.

The country is now nearing 3 million cases and has passed 131,000 deaths since the first U.S. case was reported in January. Outbreaks continue to accelerate in a number of states, especially Texas, Florida, California and Arizona, which collectively reported nearly half of all U.S. cases on Tuesday. —Will Feuer

Read CNBC’s previous coronavirus live coverage here: San Francisco delays reopening of indoor dining as U.S. nears 3 million cases