Coronavirus live updates: New York adds states to travel advisory; pandemic roils corporate earnings

Before Best Buy customers step into stores, they’ll now have to put on a mask or face covering.

Starting Wednesday, the company will require shoppers to wear masks in an effort to keep customers, communities and employees safe, Best Buys said in a news release.

Best Buy is joining other retailers, including Costco and Apple, that already require face coverings. The big-box retailer will provide a mask if a customer does not have one, and it said customers can continue to shop in other ways, such as curbside pick-up or at-home delivery. 

Best Buy previously stopped short of mandating the face coverings but encouraged their use. The company’s CEO Corie Barry said in May that customers largely complied, but employees also dealt with customers who didn’t want to wear masks and were “scared, frustrated and occasionally hostile.” —Melissa Repko

Mall owners are finding creative ways to use their parking lots during the coronavirus pandemic, even setting up the empty expanses as sources of revenue — welcome at a time when some retailers inside the mall are closing for good or skipping rent. 

Brookfield Properties has inked a deal with the entertainment company Kilburn Live to turn the parking lots at a number of its U.S. malls into drive-in theaters, hosting movies and virtual concerts. Kilburn acts as a tenant to Brookfield, just like Macy’s or Nike, and pays rent to occupy the space outside. Michelle Snyder, the chief marketing officer of Brookfield’s retail arm, said the mall owner has plenty of other ideas in the pipeline.

Other mall parking lots across the country are hosting food trucks, serving as Covid-19 testing sites and serving as curbside pickup destinations, among other uses. Some of these solutions could become permanent, especially if the pandemic lasts longer than expected and consumers remain cautious to visit enclosed spaces. —Lauren Thomas 

More than 5.4 million people who were laid off from their jobs amid the pandemic are now uninsured, according to a new study by Families USA, an advocacy group. For comparison, 3.9 million people became uninsured in the Great Recession between 2008 and 2009. 

Getting health coverage on your own can be complicated and expensive. Generally, newly laid off and uninsured people will have three ways to get coverage: COBRA, the Affordable Care Act subsidized marketplace or a public plan like Medicaid or Medicare.

Here’s how to figure out what’s best for you. —Annie Nova 

Delta Air Lines‘ longtime strategy of taking stakes in foreign carriers is backfiring in the pandemic. The Atlanta-based carrier said it took more than $2 billion in charges in the second quarter because of those soured investments, including in LATAM and Aeromexico, two airlines that recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It also took a $200 million charge for turmoil at partner Virgin Atlantic.

Delta said that the governments in these airlines’ home countries didn’t provide financial support like the $50 billion in loans and direct federal aid set aside for U.S. airlines.

“While each of these is disappointing, none of our partners’ home countries were prepared to provide governmental financial support similar to what the U.S. Treasury did with the CARES Act which necessitated their decisions to restructure,” Delta CEO Ed Bastian said in an earnings call Tuesday. —Leslie Josephs

The U.S. surpassed more than 60,000 new coronavirus cases for the first time on Monday, based on an average of new cases per day over the previous seven days, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. 

More than a third of U.S. states reported record highs in daily new cases, based on a seven-day moving average, according to the data. Twenty states, including Florida and Georgia, broke records on Monday. 

When adjusting for population size, Florida now has the fastest growing outbreak in the U.S., followed by Arizona, Louisiana and South Carolina.

The average daily Covid-19 cases per 100,000 residents in Florida and Arizona are now on par with New York during the height of its epidemic in April, according to the CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins data.

However, some public officials warn that the increased testing capacity could be skewing those numbers. New York wasn’t able to do nearly as much testing in April as many states do now. —Jasmine Kim, Nate Rattner

Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday that she would delay or cancel the House’s August recess if needed to approve another coronavirus relief bill. 

The House speaker said she would “absolutely” have representatives forego a planned month in their districts in order to approve more aid as the pandemic rampages in southern and western states. To pass an aid package before the end of the month, the Democratic-held House and Republican-controlled Senate will have to resolve several major issues including the expiring $600 per week federal unemployment benefit, aid for state and local governments and GOP plans to give doctors and businesses liability protections. 

As the U.S. unemployment rate stands above 11%, millions of Americans will face a sudden and steep loss of income when the extra jobless benefit expires at the end of the month. Pelosi also aims to pass assistance for renters and homeowners as moratoriums on evictions and foreclosures start to expire around the country. 

Both Democrats and Republicans back another round of direct payments to individuals. But the GOP could support setting a lower income threshold for receiving a stimulus check than Democrats would. — Jacob Pramuk

Thomas M. File, Jr., president of the Infectious Disease Society of America, said in an issued statement that efforts to discredit Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the leading voices in the country’s response to the coronavirus, “at this perilous moment are disturbing.”

The White House has tried to distance itself from and discredit Fauci over the weekend, saying “several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things,” according to a statement first reported by The Washington Post. 

“Knowledge changes over time. That is to be expected,” File said in his statement in support of Fauci. 

Meanwhile, four former heads of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chastised U.S. leaders for politicizing the country’s Covid-19 response. In an op-ed in The Washington Post, the former CDC directors, who served under both Democrat and Republican presidents, wrote that the U.S. faces “two opponents” in its efforts to reopen the country: Covid-19 and politicians and others attempting to undermine the CDC. — Noah Higgins-Dunn

Marc Benioff, the Salesforce co-founder and chief executive, told CNBC’s “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer that universal face mask use could end the coronavirus in the United States within a few weeks.

“Masks are so important,” Benioff said. “If everyone in the United States wore a mask for 3 weeks — just 3 weeks — we would not have any more coronavirus, because there would be no more spread, but people do not want to wear masks.”

Benioff and Cramer came together to sponsor the Next-Gen Mask Challenge, launched by pandemic response coalition XPRIZE Pandemic Alliance. The eight-month challenge offers a $1 million prize divided to three teams that can design a face mask that the public will wear, CNBC’s Tyler Clifford reports. —Suzanne Blake

Moderna, which is working with the National Institutes of Health, will start its late-stage trial testing if a potential Covid-19 vaccine on July 27, according to a new posting published on ClinicalTrials.gov. The trial will enroll 30,000 participants, some of whom will receive a placebo. 

In May, the company released data from its early-stage trial, which showed the vaccine produced neutralizing antibodies, which researchers believe is necessary to build immunity to the virus, in at least eight participants. The vaccine also produced an immune response in all participants.

The effort by Moderna is one of several working on a potential vaccine for Covid-19, which continues to rapidly spread across the globe. More than 100 vaccines are under development globally, according to the World Health Organization. —Berkeley Lovelace Jr.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that four additional states — Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio and Wisconsin — have met the state’s travel advisory metrics and travelers from those states will be ordered to quarantine for 14 days, according to a statement from Cuomo’s office.

There are now 22 states on New York’s travel advisory, which was signed alongside the governors of New Jersey and Connecticut, according to the statement. Delaware has been removed from the list.

The quarantine applies to any person arriving from a state with a positive test rate higher than 10 per 100,000 residents or a state with a 10% or higher positivity rate over a seven-day rolling average, according to the order. Cuomo announced Monday that the state would ramp up its enforcement of the order, stationing “enforcement teams” at the state’s airports and Port Authority in New York City. — Noah Higgins-Dunn

Qantas Airways is effectively cutting nearly all its international flights until March 2021, changes to the airline’s inventory reveal. Australia’s flagship carrier will only maintain a few flights to New Zealand, which are currently still grounded until mid-August of this year. 

The airline has removed inventory for all its international routes beyond New Zealand, a move that typically precedes cancellation. 

Qantas in March announced the suspension of all international flights until October, a grounding period that now looks to be extended to a full year — and could still extend further as the coronavirus pandemic continues to batter air travel. The airline’s stock price has fallen just over 50% year to date.

The airline announced in June that it was retiring its six Boeing 747 planes immediately, six months before initially planned, slashing 20% of its staff, and grounding its double-decker Airbus A380s for the next three years. —Natasha Turak

As the virus was spreading in China, small biopharma company NanoViricides, began a press tour claiming to be close to clinical trials for a treatment for Covid-19.

 “What we have built is actually a Venus flytrap for viruses,” Anil Diwan, NanoViricides’ president and chairman, said in an interview with Fox Business on Jan. 23.

 The media appearances and press releases started in late January, sometimes appearing to send the stock soaring. When asked in the interview if that was reality, Diwan conceded it was not yet.

Investors took note. The news sent NanoViricides’ stock briefly soaring from under $4 to nearly $17 per share.  In the wake of CNBC’s report that was published this morning, the stock plunged more than 10% to below $7.

NanoViricides is a 15-year-old drug development company based in Shelton, Connecticut, with a market cap of more than $77 million on Monday. 

However, investors may be leery of the company’s history. CNBC found that this coronavirus isn’t the first time the company’s stock has shot up during a global health scare apparently due to press releases.

The company has made announcements about drug developments during other global health scares, such as Ebola, bird flu and swine flu (H1N1). Each time, the company’s stock appeared to rise on the news before falling. 

In a stock prospectus filed July 9, the company revealed it has no revenue and has never had a candidate ready for clinical trials in humans.

How has the company stayed in business without any revenue? It appears mostly to be from issuing new shares of stock for investors.  

On Jan. 24, the day after the first appearance by Diwan on Fox Business, the company announced it closed a public offering of 2.5 million shares of stock. 

In March, the company registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission to sell $150 million worth of stock in the future. 

Despite the press releases and media appearances on coronavirus, Diwan said in an email in February the company is focused on a different disease. 

“Our priority remains our lead drug candidate for the treatment of shingles rash. … We have limited resources that we must judiciously prioritize towards making our drug development programs successful,” he said in that email. “We are performing activities for the coronavirus project solely from a humanitarian perspective.” 

Vyas confirmed by email in late April that this remained correct. The company has not responded to CNBC’s follow-up questions. —Jennifer Schlesinger

Coronavirus pushed Delta Air Lines and banking giant Wells Fargo to rare quarterly losses, the companies said in some of the first quarterly reports of what’s expected to be a messy earnings season. 

Delta posted a second-quarter loss of $5.7 billion, the airline’s largest since 2008. Air travel demand all but halted during at the peak of coronavirus shutdowns, causing Delta and other carriers to slash flight schedules and burn through cash. 

Wells Fargo’s second-quarter net loss of $2.4 billion marks the bank’s first since the financial crisis. The company set aside $8.4 billion in loan loss reserves tied to the coronavirus pandemic and slashed its dividend from 51 cents a share to just 10 cents. 

For more on how corporate earnings are faring during Covid-19, click here. —Sara Salinas

3M and researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are partnering to produce a rapid, widely accessible coronavirus antigen test, the company announced.

The current U.S. testing capacity has struggled to keep up with the surge in demand driven by expanding outbreaks in a number of states, including Florida, Texas and California. Rapid, affordable and accurate antigen tests could help quickly detect new infections and target public health interventions. 

Antigen tests can be more quickly processed and are less dependent on the global supply chain than so-called PCR diagnostic tests, which are seen as the most accurate screening strategy currently available. Antigen tests are typically less sensitive than PCR tests, which means they can result in false negatives that misdiagnose someone who actually has an active infection. 

“The biggest challenge in the outbreak is identifying who is infectious,” Hadley Sikes, the lead researcher of the MIT team, told CNBC. “Trying to figure out who is infectious and having them isolate. That’s really what we need.” —Will Feuer

Researchers at Kings College London (KCL) in the U.K. have found that antibody responses to the coronavirus tend to peak three weeks after the initial onset of symptoms, but then begin to decline after as little as two or three months afterwards meaning that immunity to the virus could be short-lived.

The study, led by Dr. Katie Doores from KCL’s School of Immunology & Microbial Sciences, examined the antibody levels of over 90 patients, health-care workers and staff at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS foundation trust, which runs several London hospitals, between March and June.

While 60% of the people in the study had a “potent” level of antibodies an average of 23 days after the first onset of symptoms, that figure dropped to 16.7% of those tested 65 days after the first signs of symptoms.

Doores said that further research is needed to determine the level of antibodies required for protection from infection.

“We need to continue to measure antibody responses in these individuals to see if antibody titres continue to drop or plateau to a steady state,” she said. Antibody titres refer to the presence, and amount, of antibodies within a person’s blood. —Holly Ellyatt

Hong Kong reported 48 new cases of the coronavirus on Tuesday as the city continues to grapple with a new cluster of infections, many of which are tied to a series of restaurants, according to the city’s health authorities, Reuters reported.

“Half of the reported cases today have unknown sources. It is very worrying because the cases can spread easily in the community,” said Dr. Chuang Shuk-kwan, a senior health official, according to Reuters.

On Monday, The Center for Health Protection of the Department of Health announced 52 new confirmed cases. The health agency identified the restaurants that the clusters are believed to be tied to and encouraged people who had recently visited them to seek out testing. All residents of the buildings of infected people were given supplies to collect their own samples to be tested. The city has now reported 1,570 total cases.

In response to the spreading infections, Hong Kong will implement new, harsh restrictions on gatherings that take effect at midnight, local time. The new restrictions require masks on public transportation, prohibit restaurants from providing dine-in service, and limit gatherings to four people. —Will Feuer

Read CNBC’s previous coronavirus live coverage here: California’s two largest school districts to return online in the fall