Coronavirus live updates: New Jersey lifts stay-at-home order; deadlines loom for airline workers to take buyouts

Even as some countries, particularly those first hit by the coronavirus, show some positive signs of improvement, the World Health Organization has warned that the pandemic is still worsening around the world. Most daily new cases are coming from 10 countries, according to the WHO, mostly in the Americas and South Asia. 

In the U.S., the New York City region, which was the initial epicenter of the country’s outbreak, has seen the daily growth of its epidemic decline substantially, and officials have begun to ease restrictions. However, some states that were among the first to reopen have begun to see signs that their outbreaks are worsening. 

This is CNBC’s live blog covering all the latest news on the coronavirus outbreak. This blog will be updated throughout the day as the news breaks. 

• Global cases: More than 7.17 million
• Global deaths: At least 408,244
• U.S. cases: More than 1.96 million
• U.S. deaths: At least 111,375

The data above was compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

2:50 p.m. ET — Restaurants in San Francisco can resume outdoor dining on Friday, according to Mayor London Breed.

“Opening our restaurants is a great step that will help our small businesses that are struggling, our workers who need paychecks and our residents who are ready to safely sit outside and enjoy a meal,” Breed said in a statement.

Reopened restaurants will be able to apply for access to sidewalks, parking lanes, streets and parks for outdoor dining space through the city’s Shared Spaces Program. Restaurants will also have to follow social-distancing guidance, including limiting tables to six people and requiring customers to wear masks. Retail businesses are allowed to offer indoor service to customers on June 15 and can also apply for more outdoor space through the Shared Spaces Program.  —Hannah Miller

2:45 p.m. ET — All of New York state has now begun to reopen and Gov. Andrew Cuomo pointed to spikes in Florida and elsewhere as reasons why New Yorkers should continue to practice social distancing and take other precautions.

“We’re in a new phase. We’re feeling good. We’ve done great, but we have to stay smart, because reopening resets the whole game,” Cuomo said. “When you reopen, when people start coming out, in some ways, you go right back to day one.” As New York, once the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, begins to reopen, other states, including Florida, Texas and Arizona, appear to have an expanding outbreak. —William Feuer

2:26 p.m. ET — Texas reported two consecutive days of record-breaking Covid-19 hospitalizations, with more than 2,000 patients in hospitals across the state as of early Tuesday afternoon, according to updated data from the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Coronavirus hospitalizations, like new cases and deaths, are considered a key measure of the outbreak because it helps scientists gauge how severe it may be. Research shows that it can take anywhere from five to 12 days for people to show symptoms from the virus.

Texas was among the first states to relax its statewide stay-at-home order. Last week, CDC Director Robert Redfield warned that “not all states” had met the White House criteria for reopening businesses. —Berkeley Lovelace Jr.

2:10 p.m. ET — Amazon is scaling up its efforts to test warehouse workers for coronavirus, with the goal of testing the bulk of its frontline workers every two weeks, according to three people familiar with the company’s plans. 

The company plans to launch testing sites at its fulfillment centers, where workers will swab their own noses. Amazon’s own diagnostic research labs will then analyze some of the samples to see if they’re positive or negative. Amazon is planning to develop labs in several cities, starting off in Sunnyvale, California and Kentucky, the people said. 

Amazon is also exploring pulse oximetry screening, which measures oxygen levels in the blood. The company is also considering running more frequent temperature checks at its facilities.

Workers who test positive for the coronavirus are referred to a company called Grand Rounds, a venture-backed start-up that provides online medical consultations. Grand Rounds can also answer employee questions about the virus. 

Amazon has committed to spending its expected Q2 profit of $4 billion on its Covid-19 response. It is projected to spend $1 billion on testing throughout the year. The plans align with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ pronouncement in April that he hoped the company would soon begin “regular testing of all Amazonians, including those showing no symptoms.” —Annie Palmer

1:57 p.m. ET — New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy announced that the state would lift its stay-at-home order that has been in place since mid-March. 

Murphy also said he would allow indoor gatherings at 25% of a building’s capacity, or 50 people total. The limit on outdoor gatherings would be raised from 25 to 100 people except for political activities and religious services, which are allowed to exceed that maximum.

“With more and more of our businesses reopening, we are no longer requiring you to stay at home, but we are asking you to continue being responsible and safe,” Murphy said at a press briefing.

Murphy asked residents to continue wearing face coverings and to maintain a 6-foot distance from other people when possible. —Noah Higgins-Dunn

1:34 p.m. ET — Airline workers are facing deadlines in June and July to decide whether to apply for buyouts, early retirements and other options, or face potential layoffs this fall.

The terms of $25 billion in federal coronavirus aid prohibit airlines from laying off or cutting the pay rates of workers through Sept. 30, but airline executives have warned they expect to have to shrink their airlines and that they would need fewer employees.

Travel demand is starting to rise again, but data from the Transportation Security Administration shows the number of people passing through U.S. airports is still more than 80% below last year’s levels.

Some of the packages include cash and years of free flights and other benefits, an effort by the airlines to entice employees to exit their payrolls as soon as possible. If they gamble on layoffs once the federal aid terms expire, they could walk away nearly empty-handed or with less generous benefits.

Most employees who spoke with CNBC found it a tough sell. Because the entire industry is reeling it is difficult for them to jump to another airline. —Leslie Josephs

1:13 p.m. ET — As states begin to reopen restaurants and stores following months of closure, liquor store owners are wondering whether the new normal will bolster or tank business.  

Classified in several states as essential businesses, liquor stores have for the most part remained open across the country while many Americans stayed home.

Store owners have continued to run their businesses with fewer resources and in some cases, higher demand. They’ve also had to more frequently respond to high-stress incidents like customers refusing to follow social distancing or wear masks.

Multiple shop owners and employees told CNBC about the challenges of running a liquor store during a pandemic, including fears about tension with customers and concerns about demand returning to pre-virus levels. —Yelena Dzhanova

1:04 p.m. ET — The British government dropped its plans to reopen English primary schools to all children before summer vacation in July, due to schools’ concerns about meeting social distancing requirements, according to the Associated Press.

Instead, schools will continue a phased reopening that started last week.

Last week the youngest and oldest primary students were allowed to return as part of a wider easing of lockdown restrictions, the AP reported, with the other students coming back in stages. As of Monday, over 70% of primary schools have reopened to more students, according to Education Secretary Gavin Williamson.

To meet social distancing requirements, the AP said, schools have instituted drastic changes such as staggering starting and ending times, capping class sizes at 10, and having children eat packed lunches at their desks or in playgrounds.

Elsewhere in the U.K., Scotland and Northern Ireland have said schools will not reopen until August, while Wales is planning to reopen theirs later in June, according to the AP. —Michelle Gao

12:30 p.m. ET — The Eiffel Tower will once again welcome visitors beginning on June 25, the tower’s management announced.

The Eiffel Tower has been closed for three months because of the coronavirus pandemic, the longest closure since World War II, according to a news release announcing the date.

Visitors over the age of 11 will be required to wear masks, and the number of visitors on certain floors will be limited, tower management said. —Suzanne Blake

10:58 a.m. ET — The World Health Organization clarified its comments that transmission of the coronavirus by people who never developed symptoms is “very rare.” WHO’s Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove said during a live Q&A that asymptomatic spread is a “really complex question” and much is still unknown.

An asymptomatic person is someone with Covid-19 who doesn’t have symptoms and never develops symptoms. It’s not the same as someone who later develops symptoms, who would be classified as pre-symptomatic.

Some studies suggest as much as 40% of transmission may be due to asymptomatic individuals, Kerkhove said, clarifying her comments. However, the majority of transmission is likely from people who have symptoms and are spreading it through infectious droplets, she said.

“To truly understand how many people don’t have symptoms, we don’t actually have that answer yet,” she added.

“Some estimates of around 40% of transmission may be due to asymptomatic, but those are from models, so I didn’t include that in my answer yesterday, but wanted to make sure that I covered that here,” she said. —Berkeley Lovelace, Jr.

10:17 a.m. ET — An analysis of hospital traffic and search engine data in the Chinese city of Wuhan indicates that Covid-19 may have been circulating there in the fall of 2019.

The study from Harvard Medical School used satellite images of parking lots at six Wuhan hospitals to estimate hospital occupancy trends. It also analyzed data from Chinese search engine Baidu to determine changes in searches for Covid-19 symptoms.

Researchers found there was a steep increase in hospital occupancies from August 2019 that culminated with a peak in December 2019, with peak daily occupancies coinciding with elevated levels of Baidu search queries for the terms “diarrhea” and “cough.”

The report’s authors argued their findings supported theories that Covid-19 was already circulating before the outbreak was first documented in late December, adding that the virus may have even spread internationally before Chinese authorities detected it. —Chloe Taylor

Rate of new cases as states reopen 

9:39 a.m. ET — Stocks fell sharply at the open as investors took some money off the table amid a recession from the coronavirus pandemic, reports CNBC’s Fred Imbert and Thomas Franck. 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded 370 points lower, or 1.4%. The S&P 500 slid 1.1% while the Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.5%. —Melodie Warner

9:30 a.m. ET — Restaurants in Colorado began reopening their doors two weeks ago under strict public health measures that limit the number of diners and require employees to wear protective gear. The city of Denver is also working to help its local restaurants by allowing them to extend their outdoor spaces onto adjacent parking lots, streets and sidewalks.

Troy Guard, owner of TAG Restaurant Group, is hoping he’ll rehire some of the 623 employees he had to furlough when Gov. Jared Polis ordered all bars and restaurants to close on March 17. So far, he brought back 80 employees to staff four locations open for takeout and two that just reopened for dine-in service. His company lost $7.5 million in revenue over the 10-week shutdown. TAG’s 12 locations were making about $3 million in revenue a month before the pandemic.

While restaurant owners are looking forward to reopening their businesses, they remain concerned about a potential surge in Covid-19 cases.

“The biggest thing is that we want to make sure that when we reopen, we don’t have to close again because if we close again, it’s kind of a death sentence,” Guard said. —Jasmine Kim

9:15 a.m. ET — As the coronavirus pandemic takes a toll on many retailers’ businesses, there could be as many as 25,000 store closures announced by these companies this year, according to one firm.

U.S. retailers could announce between 20,000 and 25,000 closures in 2020, according to tracking by Coresight Research, with 55% to 60% of those situated in America’s malls. That would also mark a new record — which was previously more than 9,300 locations in 2019.

Bankruptcy filings by retailers have started to mount, and Coresight expects more are on the way.

“We expect that a return to pre-crisis levels in offline discretionary retail sales overall will be gradual, as we expect consumer confidence, demand and spending to be short of normal for some time,” Coresight founder and CEO Deborah Weinswig said in the report. —Lauren Thomas

8:17 a.m. ET — Macy’s shares are rising after the company released its preliminary financial results, saying customers are returning to reopened stores much faster than it expected. The department store operator is also telling analysts and investors it should enter the holiday season later this year in the lean inventory position. Shares were recently up more than 9% in premarket trading.

With the retailer’s stores shut for most of its fiscal first quarter due to the coronavirus pandemic, sales are expected to fall 45% to $3.02 billion from $5.5 billion a year ago, Macy’s said. It is also forecasting a quarterly net loss of $652 million, or $2.10 per share, for the period ended May 2, compared with net earnings of $136 million, or 44 cents a share, in the same period a year prior. 

As of June 1, Macy’s said it had roughly 450 locations back up and running. The company also on Monday evening announced it has raised $4.5 billion in new financing, giving it “sufficient liquidity” to weather the coronavirus crisis. —Lauren Thomas

8:10 a.m. ET — As people across the globe stayed home during the pandemic, Tiffany saw a sharp drop off in sales — especially for engagement rings.

The luxury jewelry company said same-store sales were down by about 44% during its fiscal first quarter, as most of its 324 stores temporarily closed. Its biggest decline was in engagement jewelry, which plummeted by nearly 50%

Tiffany said sales are gaining steam again, especially in China. Sales in the country jumped by 30% during April and about 90% in May, compared with the same period a year prior. And, it said, its new collection of rose gold and gold with diamonds is catching customers’ eyes. —Melissa Repko

7:42 a.m. ET — Gilead Sciences antiviral drug remdesivir helped to prevent macaques infected with the coronavirus from developing respiratory disease and reduced lung damage associated with the virus, according to a new study published in the medical journal Nature.

The study involved 12 monkeys infected with the coronavirus, with only six of them given remdesivir intravenously early on in the study. Those that received the drug did not develop respiratory disease and suffered less lung damage, the study showed.

“Our data support early remdesivir treatment initiation in Covid-19 patients to prevent progression to pneumonia,” the authors said in the report. The drug did not appear to reduce the infectiousness of the infected animals, however.

“Despite the lack of obvious respiratory signs and reduced virus replication in the lungs of remdesivir-treated animals, there was no reduction in virus shedding,” the study said. Clinical trials involving humans are ongoing. —Holly Ellyatt

7:05 a.m. ET — British drugmaker AstraZeneca expects to move two potential Covid-19 antibody-based therapeutics into clinical trials in the next two months, the company announced.

AstraZeneca said it licensed the antibodies from Vanderbilt University and hopes to develop them into a potential combination therapy for both the prevention and treatment of Covid-19.

The company, which is already working on a potential coronavirus vaccine, also said it has signed agreements with the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority to support the development of the potential treatments. —Will Feuer

Read CNBC’s previous coronavirus live coverage here: Brazil faces criticism over data; Germany reports record plunge in exports