Besides being a time to pay tribute to the military personnel who died in the service of the U.S. Armed Forces, Memorial Day weekend in usual years acts as the unofficial start of the summer season in the U.S. This year, of course, is far from usual. One indicator: for the first time in 20 years, AAA did not issue a Memorial Day weekend travel forecast, and said that it expects this year’s travel volume to set a new record low.
However, many Americans seemed determined to kick off their summer this weekend anyway. In Southern California, for example, people flocked to the beaches this weekend, reports the Guardian, prompting Governor Gavin Newsom to remind his fellow Californians that “this virus doesn’t go home because it’s a beautiful, sunny day along our coast… We can’t see the images like we saw, particularly on Saturday in Newport Beach and elsewhere.” There were similar reports from waterfronts elsewhere in the U.S. over the holiday weekend, from Massachusetts to South Carolina to Missouri to Texas.
In addition, some outdoor destination sites like Grand Canyon National Park took the holiday weekend as an opportunity to reopen to visitors, despite ongoing guidance from public health officials that most people should continue to avoid public spaces except when necessary. "With the country starting to open up this holiday weekend, I again remind everyone that the coronavirus is not yet contained," Dr. Stephen M. Hahn, commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, told CNN on Sunday.
In fact, after weeks of declining numbers of daily new cases in the U.S., the country has seen a slight uptick in the past four days.
On Friday, President Trump declared that houses of worship should be considered “essential” and called on governors nationwide to let them reopen over the holiday weekend. That declaration came the same day that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a study documenting how the virus spread rapidly among attendees of Arkansas church services in March, and two days before German health officials reported a similar outbreak among those who attended services of a Frankfurt church earlier this month.
Earlier today, both he and Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Joe Biden visited veterans memorials. President Trump and first lady Melania Trump went to services in Arlington and Baltimore—without masks on. Biden and his wife Jill Biden, meanwhile, visited a memorial in Delaware. It was, the New York Times reports, Biden’s first public appearance in two months—and he made it with a mask on.
Here's what else happened over the holiday weekend:
ELSEWHERE IN THE WORLD
On Sunday, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi warned that the U.S. is pushing China to the brink of a "new Cold War,” according to NBC News. "This dangerous attempt to turn back the wheel of history will undo the fruits of decades-long China-U.S. cooperation, dampen American's own development prospects, and put world stability and prosperity in jeopardy,” Wang told the press at a news conference at the annual session of China's National People's Congress. While Wang did not cite any specific individuals or comments, his statements follow recent missives from President Trump and his administration questioning the case number and death toll data coming out of China, and implicitly accusing the WHO of helping Beijing conceal the extent of the outbreak in its earliest days.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe today lifted a state of emergency in Tokyo and other parts of the country. "In just over a month and a half, we almost brought [the infection] situation under control," he said in a televised press conference. "The lifting of the emergency does not mean the virus is gone or infections are down to zero. Our battle against the virus will continue." Japan’s daily case rate, which peaked in mid-April, has dropped to less than 100 new cases a day in the past week or so.
Other parts of east Asia that have successfully tamped down the spread of COVID-19 are now setting the tone for what is likely to become the new normal across the globe. Hong Kong-based TIME reporter Amy Gunia wrote today about how restaurants in the metro region, known for its vibrant culinary scene, are adapting so that they can serve diners safely. The measures these establishments have taken—by most metrics effective, Gunia reports—could be a preview of what dining out looks like across the globe for the foreseeable future.
Earlier today, the World Health Organization suspended its trial of hydroxycholoroquine, the drug Trump has repeatedly hailed as a solution to COVID-19 (and, he claims, one he has taken as a preventative, despite health expert warnings against doing so). The WHO’s decision to pause the trial comes as a result of concerns that have been raised in the last week over the safety of the drug in COVID-19 patients.
The Oxford University team behind a promising vaccine told The Telegraph that its work has hit a bit of a speedbump: it may not be able to find enough participants to validate the vaccine’s efficacy. “It’s a race against the virus disappearing, and against time,” Dr. Adrian Hill, director of the university’s Jenner Institute, told the Telegraph on Saturday. “We said earlier in the year that there was an 80% chance of developing an effective vaccine by September. But at the moment, there’s a 50% chance that we get no result at all.”
In some good news, in a study published in The Lancet, a China-based team reported promising early-stage results of a vaccine being developed by the pharmaceutical company Sinovac Biotech. Researchers around the world continue to work to test a range of vaccines and treatment options at unprecedented speed. TIME senior health reporter Alice Park’s recent story on how remdesivir moved from back shelf to the best current hope for treating COVID-19 lays out how extraordinary this scientific work has been.
With the disappearance of professional sports, many people are missing one of their most regular markers of seasonality and time. Over the weekend, there were a few signs that sport could be returning.
For example, on Saturday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced that La Liga, one of the world’s premier soccer leagues, can resume play starting June 8. Spain, one of the hardest-hit countries in the world, hasn’t yet said what measures would be taken to ensure player and public safety. Last week, the Bundesliga, Germany’s highest-tier soccer league, resumed play—but in stadiums empty of fans.
Over the weekend, the National Basketball Association confirmed that it was in talks with The Walt Disney Company to restart the 2019-2020 season in late July. An NBA spokesperson told CNN that the league is considering Disney's ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex near Orlando, Fla., as a single campus for games, practices and housing. And earlier today, the National Hockey League released a memo detailing a plan to return to play, though it didn’t specify an exact date or timeline.
Major League Baseball is still reportedly shooting to start its season in July, but has struggled to come to agreements with the player’s union over many of the details of its plan. Today was the first Memorial Day in 140 years that the MLB (or its predecessors) didn’t play a game of baseball.
Meanwhile, amateur sports leagues are also starting up again in certain places—despite the obvious risks involved. TIME editor-at-large Sean Gregory reports this weekend on the Missouri Open, slated to be the first national-level tournament sanctioned by Senior Softball USA to return since the COVID-19 outbreak. Some 60 teams, with players ranging in age from 40 to 70-plus, will travel to Columbia, Mo., in early June for the tournament.
“It kind of boggles my mind,” says Arthur Caplan, director of the Division of Medical Ethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine. “It’s not the responsible thing to do.”
Correction: The Friday, May 22 edition of this newsletter misstated the number of COVID-19 deaths in Sweden. Sweden had nearly 4,000 deaths as of May 22, not nearly 33,000; it had nearly 33,000 cases. We regret the error.
Thanks for reading. We hope you find the Coronavirus Brief newsletter to be a helpful tool to navigate this very complex situation, and welcome feedback at coronavirus.brief@time.com.
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Today's newsletter was written by Elijah Wolfson and edited by Jennifer Duggan.
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