Coronavirus live updates: Hot spots flare up in South East; grocery costs jump most in 46 years

Businesses around the world are starting to plan for a restart to operations, as some executives hope the worst is behind us. President Donald Trump on Monday touted the country’s ability to test Americans for Covid-19 as central to reopening, but health officials continue to warn about the potential for a resurgence in cases if economies are reopened too soon. Starting at noon, we’ll be covering all the news out of our virtual Healthy Returns Summit, which features in-depth interviews with health care CEOs and industry leaders fighting the pandemic.

This is CNBC’s live blog covering all the latest news on the coronavirus outbreak. All times below are in Eastern time. This blog will be updated throughout the day as the news breaks. 

• Global cases: More than 4.2 million
• Global deaths: At least 287,158
• US cases: More than 1.3 million
• US deaths: At least 80,897

The data above was compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Walmart’s hourly workers will get another bonus for checking out customers, fulfilling online orders, driving trucks of grocery items and more during the coronavirus pandemic. 

It will be the second time the retailer has given special payments to employees during the pandemic. Walmart will give full-time workers $300 and part-time or temporary workers $150 on June 25. It announced special payments of the same amount in mid-March and accelerated payout of its first-quarter bonuses.

Walmart said it’s committed to spending more than $935 million in employee bonuses so far this year — including more than $390 million for the upcoming bonuses, according to a news release.

Walmart has hired an additional 200,000 employees to keep up with demand during the pandemic. The company has said many of the temporary roles have been filled by people who have lost jobs in industries like restaurants and hospitality. —Melissa Repko

CNBC’s Jim Cramer said he believes companies and their employees will be reluctant to return to physical offices after the pandemic.

“I see tremendous, tremendous tall office buildings with nobody in them,” Cramer said on “Squawk on the Street.”

The “Mad Money” host said that health concerns and the reliability of work-from-home technology will make telecommuting more common going forward. Even as states are reopening business across the country, some large employers like Facebook are considering keeping employees at home even after lockdown measures are lifted. —Jesse Pound

With more school districts deciding not to return to the classroom for the remainder of the academic year, parents are increasingly worried about the impact on their child’s education.

Their fears are not unfounded: Due to coronavirus school closures, students could be losing 30% of reading gains and 50% of math skills, according to a new report by the Northwest Evaluation Association.

Keeping kids reading and engaged with academic material can prevent skills from atrophying. Fortunately, educational institutions including Scholastic and Khan Academy, as well as some well-known children’s authors, are rolling out special digital programs in response to Covid-19 to help kids stay on track.

The best part: These programs are not only free but also kid-driven so children can work independently to help parents distracted by their own stresses, perhaps due to a job loss or the new demands of remote working. —Ilana Polyak

The major online brokers saw new accounts spike in the first quarter, when stocks experienced a dismal rout and subsequent rebound during the coronavirus crisis.

Many of these new accounts were new, younger investors.

The new accounts may represent “new investors who sense a generational-buying moment but do not have much background in the equity space,” said Citi chief U.S. equity strategist Tobias Levkovich. But young people apparently saw it as an opportunity and began buying familiar technology stocks. —Maggie Fitzgerald 

Social Capital CEO Chamath Palihapitiya defended Elon Musk’s move to reopen Tesla‘s Fremont, California, plant.

Palihapitiya argued that local, state and federal regulations amid the pandemic are confusing, and the county needs to work with Musk to make a coherent plan.

“The federal government has this specific set of guidelines. People may think they fall into those guidelines. Then states then issue guidelines and then on top of that you have regulations at local levels. When you put them all together it’s incredibly confusing,” Palihapitiya said on “Squawk Box.” —Jessica Bursztynsky

Clearly, consumers are turning to comfortable items to wear at home during the coronavirus pandemic.

Online sales of pajamas surged 143% in April from March, while purchases of pants fell 13% and bra sales declined 12%, according to data from Adobe Analytics. Online apparel sales overall in April increased 34% from March, Adobe said, as many bricks-and-mortar shops were forced shut.

Some analysts think the comfort-cozy trend could be here to stay, as many people will not be heading back to the office anytime soon. More formal wear could be in trouble. —Lauren Thomas

Hertz raised doubts about its ability to continue operations and said it was in talks with key stakeholders and advisors to develop a financing strategy.

The car rental company had last week said its lenders had extended the deadline for certain loan repayments to May 22, giving it more time to chalk out a financing plan to avoid bankruptcy.

Hertz also expects $2.5 billion in annualized savings from cost-cutting measures, such as layoffs and selling excess fleet before the shutdown of the used-car market. —Melodie Warner, Reuters

Prices Americans paid for groceries leaped in April as people stocked up on milk, eggs, meat and cereals amid government lockdowns designed to slow the spread of Covid-19. The government said Tuesday that prices U.S. consumers saw at supermarkets rose 2.6% in April, the largest one-month pop since February 1974. 

The cost of the meats, fish and eggs category gained 4.3%, fruits and vegetables rose 1.5%, cereals and bakery products climbed 2.9% and dairy goods advanced 1.5%. —Thomas Franck

With an increasing number of incoming freshmen reconsidering their options for the fall and many international students unable to enter the U.S., some colleges and universities are desperate to hit their enrollment numbers for the 2020-2021 academic year.

That means accepting more students than in the past. This spring, six of the eight Ivy Leagues, including Harvard and Yale, reported an uptick in acceptance rates for the Class of 2024.

“For the current class, acceptance rates were slightly higher than last year,” said Hafeez Lakhani, president of New York-based Lakhani Coaching. “The coming year, you are going to see another big jump.” —Jessica Dickler

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, began testifying before the Senate Health Committee. Fauci’s testimony will be closely watched by Wall Street as investors gauge the potential for the economy to reopen in a timely manner. The New York Times reported earlier that he said in prepared remarks that reopening too quickly will cause “needless suffering and death.” —Fred Imbert

Watch Dr. Fauci’s testimony here live.

President Donald Trump backed Elon Musk’s calls to resume Tesla production at its California plant. “California should let Tesla & @elonmusk open the plant, NOW. It can be done Fast & Safely!” Trump said on Twitter. Musk has been pushing to resume its California production, but local officials have advocated against swift attempts to return. —Jessica Bursztynsky 

Toyota Motor and Honda Motor issued bleak warnings on the coronavirus’s impact on global sales.

Toyota said it now expects quarterly earnings to plummet 80% to the lowest level in nine years, Reuters reported. Japan’s biggest automaker said it is facing weak demand as massive job losses and the global economic downturn have dampened consumer spending.

Honda refused to issue an outlook for the rest of the year, after reporting its weakest operating profit in four years, according to Reuters. —Terri Cullen

Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun said a major U.S. airline will likely go out of business this year because of the devastating impact of coronavirus on air travel. “I don’t want to get too predictive on that subject, but yes, most likely,” Calhoun said in an interview with NBC’s “TODAY” show that aired Tuesday. “You know, something will happen when September comes around.”

Airline passenger numbers have dropped to the lowest levels since the 1950s, according to Airlines for America trade group, and carriers are posting their first losses in years.

Calhoun said traffic levels aren’t likely to get back to even 25% of the norm in September. Airlines are required to keep their employees through the end of that month under the terms of $25 billion in federal payroll grants, which U.S. carriers started receiving portions of last month.

Airline executives have recently said that they have hit the low point but don’t expect demand to bounce back. The Transportation Security Administration said 215,645 passed through U.S. airport security checkpoints on Monday, the highest since March 25, but still down more than 91% from a year ago. —Leslie Josephs

Clarification: Calhoun’s comments to “TODAY” were aired Tuesday but were recorded earlier.

Stocks rose slightly at the open as investors evaluated the latest attempts to reopen the economy. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 133 points, or 0.6%. The S&P 500 climbed 0.5% along with the Nasdaq Composite. 

Read a full report on markets activity from CNBC’s Fred Imbert and Yun Li. —Melodie Warner

While stay-at-home orders aimed at containing the coronavirus outbreak by reducing human contact, shuttering schools, offices and other nonessential businesses have been effective, “the potential for adverse outcomes on suicide risk is high,” according to an article published in JAMA Psychiatry.

Stock market losses caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, combined with millions of people quarantining at home alone creates the “perfect storm” for an increased risk of suicide for many people, according to the JAMA article published last month.

Suicide rates also tend to peak in the late spring and summer in the northern hemisphere, according to the JAMA article co-written by Dr. Mark Reger, a leading suicide prevention researcher and chief of psychology services at VA Puget Sound Health Care System.

The fact that this “will probably coincide with peak Covid-19 prevention efforts is concerning and deserves additional study,” he wrote. In March, two-thirds of surveyed adults by the American Psychiatric Association feared the pandemic would have a long-lasting impact on the economy. —Noah Higgins-Dunn 

Former Vice President Joe Biden said that if he were president now, he would advise governors to consider Dr. Anthony Fauci’s warnings in their plans for reopening states.

“We’re in a situation where there’s a great crisis. Dr. Fauci talks about if we open needlessly or open soon, there’s going to be needless deaths and we have to have things in place. Everybody wants to open,” the likely 2020 presidential candidate said in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

President Donald Trump has been urging states to reopen businesses to prop up the U.S. economy, which has been ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic. —Yelena Dzhanova

Moderna‘s experimental coronavirus vaccine obtained the Food and Drug Administration’s “fast track” designation, which expedites the review of treatments and vaccines meant for serious conditions, Reuters reported. 

CEO Stephane Bancel told CNBC on Friday that the company anticipates working “very closely” with the U.S. government to determine who will get the first doses if the coronavirus vaccine proves to work. —Melodie Warner, Reuters

Hyatt Hotels will lay off 1,300 employees around the world as the coronavirus pandemic halts global travel, the company said late Monday, according to a report from Reuters. 

The hotel chain has also cut pay for board members, senior management and all employees, Reuters reported.

“Due to the historic drop in travel demand and the expected slow pace of recovery, Hyatt has made the extremely difficult decision to implement layoffs and restructure roles across its global corporate functions, beginning June 1, 2020,” the company said in a statement. 

Hyatt had 55,000 employees at the end of last year. —Sara Salinas

Restaurant Brands International, which owns Burger King, Tim Hortons and Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, is reopening dining rooms across the country with plans to maintain socially distancing.

Signs will indicate if a table is open or closed, and customers won’t be able to use self-serve soda machines. Most of the company’s restaurants have also erected plexiglass shields, according to an open letter from CEO Jose Cil.

Nearly 1,000 of the company’s almost 15,000 dining rooms in North American Restaurant Brands locations are fully open, as of Monday. —Amelia Lucas

Public health officials and epidemiologists expected to see a steady decline in new U.S. cases by this month, but cases continue to rise in many states, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said. He added that states that have eased restrictions, including Alabama, South Dakota and Texas, have already shown a rise in cases.  

“We’re going to see cases go up now that we’re reopening,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “You’ve seen an uptick in cases. That was expected. We know cases are going to go up as we start to resume activity.”

“The bottom line is a lot of states are now reopening activity against a backdrop that doesn’t meet the criteria that the White House set out in terms of when it would be safe to reopen,” he added. —Will Feuer

Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and is a member of the boards of Pfizer and biotech company Illumina.

The World Health Organization said its global “Solidarity Trial” has yielded “potentially positive data” on several treatments, according to Reuters. Some treatments included in the trial appear to limit the severity or length of Covid-19, spokeswoman Margaret Harris said at a news briefing, Reuters reported.

Treatments included in the global study include remdesivir, ritonavir, Interferon beta-1a and hydroxychloroquine.

“We do have some treatments that seem to be in very early studies limiting the severity or the length of the illness, but we do not have anything that can kill or stop the virus,” Harris said. “We do have potentially positive data coming out, but we need to see more data to be 100% confident that we can say this treatment over that one.” —Will Feuer

German economic output probably declined by some 20-25% for several weeks due to the coronavirus outbreak, the KfW state development bank said, according to Reuters. It said that activity likely reached a trough in April, barring a second wave of infections.

Germany went into lockdown in March to contain the outbreak but started to reopen its economy in late April. Chancellor Angela Merkel announced steps to ease more restrictions but also said an “emergency brake” mechanism would be in place to re-impose restrictions if infections pick up again. —Holly Ellyatt

Read coverage from CNBC’s Asia-Pacific and Europe teams overnight here: Ryanair plans to resume 40% of flights in July; Russia reports deadly hospital fire