U.S. death toll nears 100,000 on muted Memorial Day weekend

TOKYO - Japan is looking to lift a state of emergency for Tokyo and remaining areas still facing restrictions while also considering fresh stimulus worth almost $1 trillion to help companies ride out the coronavirus pandemic, Nikkei reported on Monday.

Social distancing curbs were removed for most of the country on May 14 as new infections fell, but the government had kept Tokyo and four other prefectures under watch.

The government will seek approval from key advisers for the lifting on Monday. If approved, Japan would have no regions under the state of emergency, which was first instated on April 7.

A Chick-fil-A in San Antonio, Texas, held a graduation ceremony last week for its class of 2020 employees. 

In a video posted on the restaurant’s Facebook page, graduates wearing face masks and gloves walk down a red carpet as their names are called. They are then adorned with a class of 2020 stole and presented with a gift basket before taking photos with a masked mascot wearing a graduation cap.

"While this may not be how you guys pictured graduation a few years ago, months ago, or even days ago, we wanted to make sure that you guys were celebrated in a way that we could all be here and celebrate you guys for the accomplishment you have made," a store employee said at the beginning of the ceremony. "We know it took a lot of hard work and determination, so we did not want that to go uncelebrated."

MEXICO CITY - Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Sunday that the coronavirus could cost as many as 1 million jobs in the country as many industries considered not essential remain shut.

The Mexican economy was already in recession before the pandemic struck and different investment banks have forecast contractions as large as 9% for this year with only a gradual recovery next year.

"My prediction is that with coronavirus, a million jobs will be lost," Lopez Obrador said in a televised speech. "But we will create two million new jobs."

Lopez Obrador's government repeatedly said it had the outbreak under control but since posted record numbers for new cases and deaths.

PORT-AU-PRINCE — Haiti's voodoo leaders have trained priests of the Afro Caribbean religion to concoct a secret remedy for the novel coronavirus and to prepare the sacred initiation chambers of their temples to receive patients.

In Haiti, where Western healthcare services are scarce and too expensive for many, inhabitants often rely on the herbal remedies and ritual practices of their voodoo “houngan” priest or “mambo” priestess.

While the virus took root slowly in the poorest country in the Americas, in the last two weeks the number of confirmed cases has nearly quintupled to 865 while reports of a mysterious "fever" are spreading. Ever since the first cases of the new coronavirus were confirmed in Haiti in mid-March, Voodoo priests have been serving up teas with ingredients including moringa, eucalyptus, ginger and honey to strengthen the immune system.

More than half of Haiti’s 11 million people are believed to practice voodoo, a religion brought from West Africa centuries ago by enslaved men and women and practiced clandestinely under French colonial rule.

The White House announced a travel ban with Brazil on Sunday that will bar anyone from entering the United States who has been in that country for the prior two weeks.

The ban, which will go into effect Thursday night, came as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths there surged. With more than 22,000 deaths and 347,000 cases, Brazil ranks second in the world after the United States, according to an NBC News tally.

The suspension includes several exemptions, including U.S. residents and spouses, siblings and children of U.S. citizens.

Doctors in Brazil have warned that there is so little testing that the rate of infection could be 15 times higher than the official estimate. On Friday, the World Health Organization called the country “a new epicenter” of the virus.

A Florida wildlife park found a creative way to make sure guests practice social distancing while visiting during the coronavirus pandemic. 

Gatorland Orlando, which reopened to the public on Saturday, introduced a new mascot, “Social Distancing Skunk Ape,” to encourage guests to remain 6 feet away from each other. The mascot has been previously featured in Gatorland’s YouTube show, “Gatorland Vlogs,” as well as their Facebook morning show, “School of Croc,” the park said on its website. 

In a video posted on the attraction’s YouTube page, the mascot is seen shoving apart guests who don’t practice social distancing and scaring another guest who doesn’t wash his hands after using the bathroom. The park said he will also appear in informational videos throughout the wildlife attraction. 

140 clients at a hair salon in Missouri have now potentially been exposed to COVID-19 after a second hairstyle at the location tested positive for the coronavirus.

On Friday, the city of Springfield said 91 people had been exposed to the coronavirus after a stylist worked for eight days while showing symptoms. Among the 91 were 84 clients and seven employees.

Now, 56 more clients have been “potentially directly exposed,” the city said Saturday, explaining that the second stylist at the Great Clips salon tested positive and worked five days while “experiencing very mild symptoms.”

Read the full story here. 

WASHINGTON — Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine on Sunday dismissed the politicization of wearing masks in public to help contain the spread of the coronavirus, imploring Americans during the Memorial Day Weekend to understand “we are truly all in this together.”

With many states like Ohio beginning to relax stay-at-home restrictions, DeWine underscored the importance of following studies that show masks are beneficial to limiting the spread of the virus in an exclusive interview with “Meet the Press.”

“This is not about politics. This is not about whether you are liberal or conservative, left or right, Republican or Democrat,” DeWine said.

Read the full story here. 

JERUSALEM— Muslims around the world on Sunday began celebrating Eid al-Fitr, a normally festive holiday marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, with millions under strict stay-at-home orders and many fearing renewed coronavirus outbreaks.

The three-day holiday is usually a time of travel, family get-togethers and lavish daytime feasts after weeks of dawn-to-dusk fasting. But this year many of the world's 1.8 billion Muslims will have to pray at home and make due with video calls.

Some countries, including Turkey, Iraq and Jordan, have imposed round-the-clock holiday curfews. But even where many restrictions have been lifted, celebrations will be subdued because of fears of the pandemic and its economic fallout.

“This outbreak is not just dampening spirits of Eid, but also has made the tradition entirely different,” said Andieka Rabbani, a university student in Jakarta. This year, like many Indonesians, he will only see family and friends through video calls.

Read the full article here.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that professional sports teams can begin training in the state as coronavirus restrictions begin to loosen. 

Cuomo told reporters Sunday that the economy can slowly reopen as cases decline — so long as smart policies are put in place, such as reduced capacity and requiring face masks. Sports teams will be allowed to conduct training together starting Sunday and veterinarian clinics can resume normal operations beginning Tuesday. 

The coronavirus pandemic has crippled cities and crushed businesses from coast to coast.

It’s also costing drug traffickers millions, multiple law enforcement officials told NBC News, because their methods of moving money have been compromised.

Since the start of the crisis, federal drug agents in major U.S. hubs have seized substantially more illicit cash than usual amid statewide lockdowns that have disrupted the way cartels do business, the officials said.

“Their activities are a lot more apparent than they were three months ago,” said Bill Bodner, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Los Angeles field office.

Read the full story here.

Long before a global pandemic swept across her cloistered corner of the Navajo Nation, Cynthia Wilson knew the pains many families took to secure and store food.

The multigenerational home she shares with her parents and eight others in Monument Valley, Utah, runs on solar panels and a generator. With no running water, her father hauls it in almost daily. They live about 8 miles from the closest and only grocery store in their high desert community, where shoppers have felt the strain of limited supplies through the rationing of foods like meat.

Prior to the coronavirus pandemic "people were dependent on the grocery store," Wilson said. "Now, they're in shock or worried about how they're going to keep their pantries filled when they can't go to the stores like they used to. It's a wake-up call that we need to go back to growing our own foods and tending to our own livestock."

Read the full story here.

How do you enforce social distancing rules in a town divided between two countries with different rules, with one of the most complex international borders in the world?

As the residents of Baarle-Hertog-Nassau have discovered, with great difficulty.

People living on some streets have been ordered to stay home, while their neighbors have been free to go out.

Baarle-Hertog-Nassau sits between Belgium and the Netherlands and is renowned for its intricate border. The town is geographically in the Netherlands, but there are 22 Belgian enclaves completely surrounded by Dutch territory.

Read more here.

Russia reported 153 coronavirus deaths in the past 24 hours on Sunday, its highest daily toll yet, raising total casualties to 3,541, health officials in the country said. 

A total of  8,599 new cases were also reported — fewer than on the previous day of 9434 — bringing the nationwide total infections to 344,481.

Although the COVID-19 outbreak was slow to spread in Russia, the country has in recent weeks seen growth rates explode.

As of Sunday, it has the third-largest reported outbreak globally after the U.S. and Brazil respectively, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair questioned U.S. President Donald Trump’s approach to the coronavirus crisis and warned of “terrifying” economic consequences if global lockdown measures continue as they are.

“The countries that locked down fast and that are building, testing, tracing and tracking capability fast, that then enables you to be more bold on the economy,” he told NBC News on Friday.

Trump's government has been accused of bungling the response to the pandemic by first downplaying the threat and not moving quickly or efficiently enough to deal with the growing crisis.

“I think the problem that you have in most Western countries today is that people are now very well-informed about the risks of the disease,” Blair said from his home in the United Kingdom where, like much of the rest of his country, he’s spent the last eight weeks with his family under lockdown.

Read more here.

The Vatican Museums will reopen on June 1, the Vatican said, ending a closure caused by the a three-month lockdown that has drained the Holy See's finances. The Museums received some 7 million visitors last year and are the Holy See's most reliable source of income, previously generating an estimated $100 million yearly.

A statement said the Museums — which house some of the world's greatest Renaissance masterpieces as well as ancient Roman and Egyptian artifacts — can be visited from the beginning of June, though only by making online reservations in order to control the number of visitors.

Staff will wear masks and gloves and health workers will be on hand, according to the statement. Visitors will have their temperatures checked and will have to wear masks and use hand sanitizer. 

Italian museums began reopening last week as part of a staged easing of lockdown measures in the country where nearly 33,000 people have died from the virus.

A senior adviser to Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson is facing calls for his resignation after reports that he drove 250 miles to his parents house while his wife showed virus symptoms, breaching lockdown regulations.   

Dominic Cummings travelled 250 miles from London to northern England in March after the government stipulated that people should remain at their primary residence, leaving only for essential local errands and exercise, and to not visit relatives. Anyone with symptoms was advised told to completely self-isolate.

A number of politicians from rival parties to Johnson's Conservative Party have since called for him to stand down, as have some members of his own party.  

Thailand reported no new coronavirus cases and no new deaths on Sunday, maintaining the total to 3,040 confirmed cases and 56 fatalities since the outbreak began in January.

Sunday was the fourth day in this month that there were no new daily cases, said Panprapa Yongtrakul, a spokeswoman for the government’s coronavirus task force. There are 2,921 patients who have recovered and returned home since the outbreak started, she said.

On Saturday, Thailand began testing a vaccine against the coronavirus on monkeys after positive trials in mice, an official said. Thailand's minister of higher education, science, and research and innovation, Suvit Maesincee, said researchers had moved testing of the vaccine to monkeys and hoped to have a "clearer outcome" of its effectiveness by September.

China confirmed three new COVID-19 cases on Sunday, just 24-hours after no new cases were reported in the country for the first time since the outbreak began in the central city of Wuhan late last year.

Of the new cases, two were imported while one was a local transmission, China's National Health Commission said. 

The country has seen a sharp drop in locally transmitted cases since March, as major restrictions on movement helped it to take control of the epidemic in parts of the vast country.

The number of confirmed cases in the mainland stands at 82,974 and the death toll remained unchanged at 4,634 on Sunday. 

Australia's prime minister stressed the need to create jobs as a way to minimize government welfare spending, while the country's second-most populous state Victoria set out measures to resume tourism to regions ravaged by bushfires and virus-linked curbs.

"Whether it's how we access markets, how we deliver assistance, whether it's to bushfire affected communities... the thing that gets Australia back to where we want to be is making jobs," Scott Morrison told reporters on Sunday. Morrison said it was important to get agriculture and tourism back up to create more jobs and drive the economy.

These are his first comments since the Treasury Department flagged last week that Australia had vastly over-estimated the initial costs of its coronavirus wage subsidy scheme.

Australia on Friday halved the number of people expected to be covered by its subsidy scheme due to reporting errors and after swiftly controlling the outbreak, a revision that will save the government around 60 billion Australian dollars ($39 billion). Australia has so far reported more than 7,000 cases, according to the country's Department of Health. 

Two men were arrested by authorities in Hawaii after they allegedly violated self-quarantine rules for visitors and returning residents, Gov. David Ige's office said Saturday.

Artyon Zhiryada, 20, of Happy Valley, Oregon, and Dan Vlasenko, 19, of Vancouver, Washington, were arrested Friday as they exited a condominium in Honolulu, the office said. They arrived May 16, it said.

The pair represents the fourth and fifth high-profile arrests of visitors who allegedly failed to isolate for 14 days as a pandemic precaution ordered by Ige. It was at least the third time a suspect was accused because authorities said they found imagery of their public activity on social media.

Zhiryada also faced an allegation of cruelty to animals after he posted a video showing him shooting a "feral" chicken with a speargun in a parking lot, the governor's office said.

More than 100 workers at a Los Angeles-area meat plant that makes the famous Dodger hot dogs have tested positive for the coronavirus.

At least 116 people at the Smithfield Foods-owned Farmer John processing plant have been infected, according to the Los Angeles County public health department. Local media reports put the estimate closer to 140 people, NBC Los Angeles reported. 

Smithfield, which bought Farmer John in 2017, could not be reached for comment. The company previously closed multiple plants throughout the country because of coronavirus outbreaks among employees.

According to Smithfield's website, “every employee involved in handling, preparing and processing food wears personal protective equipment covering their heads, faces (including masks and face shields), hands and bodies. Additionally, employees undergo temperature checks and are screened for COVID-19 symptoms.”

The New York Times plans to dedicate its entire Sunday front page to hundreds of names of Americans killed by the coronavirus.

On Saturday, it tweeted an image of the page, which is topped with the headline, "U.S. DEATHS NEAR 100,000, AN INCALCULABLE LOSS."

An introduction to the list explains,"The 1,000 people here reflect just 1 percent of the toll." Victims get brief descriptions: "Florencio Almazo Morán, 65, New York City, one-man army."

Marc Lacey, the Times' national editor, said in a story explaining the presentation, "I wanted something that people would look back on in 100 years to understand the toll of what we’re living through."

In April, NBC News documented "60 Lives 60 Days: Stories of victims we've lost from COVID-19 two months since the first U.S. death."