AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EDT

3 members of White House virus task force in quarantine

WASHINGTON (AP) — Three members of the White House coronavirus task force, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, placed themselves in quarantine after contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19, another stark reminder that not even one of the nation’s most secure buildings is immune from the virus.

Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a leading member of the task force, has become nationally known for his simple and direct explanations to the public about the coronavirus and COVID-19, the disease it causes. Also quarantining are Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, Stephen Hahn.

Fauci’s institute said that he has tested negative for COVID-19 and will continue to be tested regularly. It added that he is considered at “relatively low risk” based on the degree of his exposure, and that he would be “taking appropriate precautions” to mitigate the risk to personal contacts while still carrying out his duties. While he will stay at home and telework, Fauci will go to the White House if called and take every precaution, the institute said.

Redfield will be “teleworking for the next two weeks” after it was determined he had a “low risk exposure” to a person at the White House, the CDC said in a statement Saturday evening. The statement said he felt fine and has no symptoms.

Just a few hours earlier, the Food and Drug Administration confirmed that Hahn had come in contact with someone who tested positive and was in self-quarantine for the next two weeks. He tested negative for the virus.

___

A distinct possibility: ‘Temporary’ layoffs may be permanent

WASHINGTON (AP) — In late March, Britney Ruby Miller, co-owner of a small chain of steakhouse restaurants, confidently proclaimed that once the viral outbreak had subsided, her company planned to recall all its laid-off workers.

Now? Miller would be thrilled to eventually restore three-quarters of the roughly 600 workers her company had to let go.

“I’m being realistic,” she said. “Bringing back 75% of our staff would be incredible.”

Call it realism or pessimism, but more employers are coming to a reluctant conclusion: Many of the employees they’ve had to lay off in the face of the pandemic might not be returning to their old jobs anytime soon. Some large companies won’t have enough customers to justify it. And some small businesses won’t likely survive at all despite aid provided by the federal government.

If so, that would undercut a glimmer of hope in the brutal April jobs report the government issued Friday, in which a record-shattering 20.5 million people lost jobs: A sizable majority of the jobless — nearly 80% — characterized their loss as only temporary.

___

Reopenings bring new cases in S. Korea, virus fears in Italy

ROME (AP) — South Korea’s capital closed down more than 2,100 bars and other nightspots Saturday because of a new cluster of coronavirus infections, Germany scrambled to contain fresh outbreaks at slaughterhouses, and Italian authorities worried that people were getting too friendly at cocktail hour during the country’s first weekend of eased restrictions.

The new flareups — and fears of a second wave of contagion — underscored the dilemma authorities face as they try to reopen their economies.

Around the world, the U.S. and other hard-hit countries are wrestling with how to ease curbs on business and public activity without causing the virus to come surging back.

In New York, the deadliest hot spot in the U.S., Gov. Andrew Cuomo said three children died from a possible complication of the coronavirus involving swollen blood vessels and heart problems. At least 73 children statewide have been diagnosed with symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease — a rare inflammatory condition — and toxic shock syndrome. But there is no proof the mysterious syndrome is caused by the virus.

Two members of the White House coronavirus task force — the heads of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration — placed themselves in quarantine after contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19, a stark reminder that not even one of the nation’s most secure buildings is immune from the virus.

___

Little Richard, flamboyant rock ‘n’ roll pioneer, dead at 87

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Little Richard, one of the chief architects of rock ‘n’ roll whose piercing wail, pounding piano and towering pompadour irrevocably altered popular music while introducing black R&B to white America, died Saturday after battling bone cancer. He was 87.

Pastor Bill Minson, a close friend of Little Richard’s, told The Associated Press that Little Richard died Saturday morning. His son, Danny Jones Penniman, also confirmed his father’s death, which was first reported by Rolling Stone.

Bill Sobel, Little Richard’s attorney for more than three decades, told the AP in an email that the musician died of bone cancer at a family home in Tullahoma, Tennessee.

“He was not only an iconic and legendary musician, but he was also a kind, empathetic, and insightful human being,” Sobel said.

Born Richard Penniman, Little Richard was one of rock ‘n’ roll’s founding fathers who helped shatter the colour line on the music charts, joining Chuck Berry and Fats Domino in bringing what was once called “race music” into the mainstream. Richard’s hyperkinetic piano playing, coupled with his howling vocals and hairdo, made him an implausible sensation — a gay, black man celebrated across America during the buttoned-down Eisenhower era.

___

In Japan, pandemic brings outbreaks of bullying, ostracism

TOKYO (AP) — The coronavirus in Japan has brought not just an epidemic of infections, but also an onslaught of bullying and discrimination against the sick, their families and health workers.

A government campaign to raise awareness seems to be helping, at least for medical workers. But it’s made only limited headway in countering the harassment and shunning that may be discouraging people from seeking testing and care and hindering the battle against the pandemic.

When Arisa Kadono tested positive and was hospitalized in early April, she was only identified as a woman in her 20s in food business. Soon, friends let her know that groundless rumours were circulating: that the family-run bar she helps with was a hotbed of virus; that she had dined with a popular baseball player who was infected earlier but she has never met; that she was sneaking out of the hospital and spreading the virus.

“It was as if I was a criminal,” Kadono said in an interview from her home in Himeji, western Japan, after ending her three-week hospitalization.

Apart from a fever on the first day and a loss of smell, Kadono had no major symptoms though she repeatedly tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19. Her mother developed pneumonia and was briefly in intensive care at another hospital.

___

Obama lashes out at Trump in call with supporters

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Barack Obama harshly criticized President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as an “absolute chaotic disaster” during a conversation with ex-members of his administration, according to a recording obtained by Yahoo News.

Obama also reacted to the Justice Department dropping its criminal case against Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, saying he worried that the “basic understanding of rule of law is at risk.”

More than 78,400 people with COVID-19 have died in the United States and more than 1.3 million people have tested positive, according to the latest estimates from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

Obama’s comments came during a Friday call with 3,000 members of the Obama Alumni Association, people who served in his administration. Obama urged his supporters to back his former vice-president, Joe Biden, who is trying to unseat Trump in the Nov. 3 election.

“What we’re fighting against is these long-term trends in which being selfish, being tribal, being divided, and seeing others as an enemy — that has become a stronger impulse in American life. And by the way, we’re seeing that internationally as well. It’s part of the reason why the response to this global crisis has been so anemic and spotty,” Obama said, according to Yahoo News.

___

NY priest on virus front lines with embattled congregation

NEW YORK (AP) — Raul Luis López never had the chance to say goodbye.

López was hospitalized for COVID-19 on April 3 before succumbing nearly three weeks later. The 39-year-old native of Oaxaca, Mexico, suffered from diabetes which worsened his illness. The day he left for treatment was the last time his wife, Sara Cruz, saw him.

Now López’s family, clad in surgical masks and gloves, was gathered in the widow’s living room in the Corona neighbourhood of Queens, New York, around a black box of his cremated remains. A rendering of the Virgin of Guadalupe, patroness of Mexico and the Americas, watched over his ashes on a table beside flowers and prayer candles.

The Rev. Fabian Arias, a Catholic priest from Buenos Aires, Argentina, is the pastor of Iglesia de Sion, a congregation with a mission relationship alongside Saint Peter’s Church in Manhattan, and has performed funeral services 14 times in the last two months. Saturday’s service for López was the first he’s been able to perform in a private residence.

“Ninety-nine per cent of funeral homes are not receiving people for religious ceremonies; they say ‘no,’” said Arias “They will take your body and provide cremation.”

___

National parks visitors should plan for ‘new normal’

BRYCE CANYON NATIONAL PARK, Utah (AP) — After closing amid the coronavirus pandemic, the National Park Service is testing public access at several parks across the nation, including two in Utah, with limited offerings and services. Visitor centres and campgrounds remain largely shuttered at Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef, but visitors are welcome at some of the sites.

“I felt like they did it right here because if they opened all the services, I think it would have been too much. Too many people would hit it,” Donna Sullivan, of Sedona, Arizona, told The Salt Lake Tribune Wednesday at Bryce Canyon.

Sullivan was on a day visit to hike the park’s Rim Trail and Bryce Amphitheater, two of the few hiking destinations currently open at Bryce. She found plenty of room to social distance, but Bryce will likely see larger crowds as word gets out that the park is open and will not collect entry fees.

Visitors should steel themselves for a “new normal” that will not likely square with their last trip, said Acting Park Service Director David Vela.

“You may have facilities that aren’t going to be available, but the (park’s) footprint will be. So it will be a different visitor experience, and it will be a different normal that we’re going to need to own and, frankly, mitigate,” Vela said Friday. “This gets to the value and importance of making sure that visitors know what to expect when they get to the park, making sure that visitors go to the park’s website (and) social media … as to what is accessible, how to plan your trip, and, most importantly, what are the expectations when you get there.”

___

NY’s Cuomo criticized over highest nursing home death toll

NEW YORK (AP) — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has won bipartisan praise for rallying supplies for his ravaged hospitals and helping slow the coronavirus, is coming under increasing criticism for not bringing that same level of commitment to a problem that has so far stymied him: nursing homes.

In part-lecture, part-cheerleading briefings that have made him a Democratic counter to President Donald Trump, Cuomo has often seemed dismissive and resigned to defeat when asked about his state leading the nation in nursing home deaths.

“We’ve tried everything to keep it out of a nursing home, but it’s virtually impossible,” Cuomo told reporters. “Now is not the best time to put your mother in a nursing home. That is a fact.”

Residents’ relatives, health care watchdogs and lawmakers from both parties cite problems with testing and transparency that have prevented officials — and the public — from grasping the full scale of the catastrophe.

And they are second-guessing a state directive that requires nursing homes take on new patients infected with COVID-19 — an order they say accelerated outbreaks in facilities that are prime breeding grounds for infectious diseases.

___

Rangers, IRS volunteers lead in returns of federal workers

WASHINGTON (AP) — Returning Internal Revenue Service workers in Kansas City are being directed to a room well-stocked with face masks, while some other IRS offices were still telling staffers to buy or make their own as the Trump administration starts rolling out a location-based plan for returning more of the some 2 million federal workers to job sites.

The administration says the broad discretion in its coronavirus guidelines will allow agency heads to get federal workers back first in areas where rates of cases are lower and where protective measures and health care are robust. Officials for unions representing the federal government’s civilian workforce are expressing cautious approval at some of the spot-by-spot plans being drawn up, but they still fear workers will be ordered back and risk infection as President Donald Trump tries to push the U.S. economy back up on its feet.

So far, it’s only a partial return bringing back comparatively few of the federal employees sent home for safety amid the outbreak. But with the U.S. still among the hardest hit in an outbreak that has killed 275,000 people around the world, some federal workers fear they’ll be political pawns.

“Trump just wants to bring people back, because he wants to reset the economy. The one workforce he has control over is the federal workforce,” said Nicole Cantello, a staffer in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Chicago region, and a local president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing federal workers.

Guidelines late last month from the White House Office of Management and Budget and the federal Office of Personnel Management call for phased returns based partly on local conditions, such as whether there have been 14 straight days of declining cases of coronavirus and flu. But the federal guidelines largely shy away from mandates, such as any directives to make protective gear available to all federal workers.