Cases rise in Eastern Europe; Gottlieb warns of ‘low-level spread’ during the summer

Health officials are warning that mass gatherings across the country could further spread the coronavirus, just as much of the economy is beginning to restart. Protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man in Minneapolis, continued for a seventh night with overnight clashes between law enforcement and demonstrators.

The World Health Organization, which has faced criticism for repeatedly praising China for a speedy response to the emergence of the coronavirus, complained in private meetings that China was not releasing enough information or doing so quickly enough about the virus, the Associated Press reported. 

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 6.28 million
• Global deaths: At least 375,987
• U.S. cases: More than 1.81 million
• U.S. deaths: At least 105,147

The data above was compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

9:50 a.m. ET — A technical snafu in a U.S. government system caused many small businesses to receive loans twice or more under a federal aid program designed to help businesses hurt by the novel coronavirus pandemic, Reuters reported.

The error was caused by a blind spot in the Small Business Administration’s loan processing system which failed to see when some borrowers submitted applications multiple times, typically with several different lenders.

The government and lenders have been trying to identify and recover the money mistakenly handed out in recent weeks, one of the people briefed on the matter said, according to Reuters. —Melodie Warner 

9:34 a.m. ET — Stocks rose on Tuesday as investors looked past civil unrest around the country and focused on the reopening of the economy from the coronavirus pandemic. The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded 130 points higher, or 0.5{3c4481f38fc19dde56b7b1f4329b509c88239ba5565146922180ec5012de023f}. The S&P 500 climbed 0.3{3c4481f38fc19dde56b7b1f4329b509c88239ba5565146922180ec5012de023f} while the Nasdaq Composite posted a marginal gain. 

Read stock market activity updates from CNBC’s Fred Imbert and Yun Li. —Melodie Warner 

9:08 a.m. ET — Delta Air Lines will fly its last two passenger flights with its MD-88 and MD-90 planes on Tuesday after it pushed up their retirement on because of coronavirus. Delta has parked more than 600 planes because of a plunge in demand over the past few months. The move ends the life of the MD-88 and MD-90s in U.S. passenger airline fleets. American retired its MD-80s last September.

Nicknamed by pilots the “Mad Dog,” the MD-88s are now a vestige of a noisier era of air travel. Delta first took delivery of its MD-88s in 1987, while American got its first MD-80s, or “Super 80” fleet started in 1983. Airlines have since turned to planes that have quieter and more fuel-efficient high-bypass engines.

When Delta removed them from its LaGuardia service in March 2017 Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said: “We welcome Delta Air Lines’ positive and responsive decision to retire these aircraft, which will provide some much-needed noise relief to all nearby neighborhoods.” —Leslie Josephs 

7:12 a.m. ET — What appears to be a seasonal nature of the coronavirus could prevent a spike in confirmed Covid-19 cases in the U.S. this summer, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said. However, if daily new cases remain as stubbornly high as they are now, it could set the country up for a nasty fall season, he said.

“I think what happens is we get low-level spread all through the summer. We don’t really see cases come down a lot. We don’t see them go up a lot, and so all the benefits of what could have been a seasonal effect kind of get washed out by the fact that we’re doing more,” he said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “We’re going to accept that, but that sets up risk for the fall.”

The U.S. continues to report nearly 20,000 new cases per day, Gottlieb said, as spread of the virus shifts from the hardest hit cities like New York and Detroit to other communities across the country. With new cases popping up all over and a still-constrained testing infrastructure, Gottlieb said the slow burn of cases could “seed” infections for another major fall outbreak. —Will Feuer

Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and is a member of the boards of Pfizer and biotech company Illumina.

6:52 a.m. ET — As daily new cases continue to decline across Western Europe, hotspots in Russia and Eastern Europe continue to worsen, the World Health Organization said, according to Reuters.

“At the moment in Europe, in Western Europe, we are seeing a steady decline,” spokeswoman Margaret Harris told reporters. “It’s not speedy but there’s a steady decline in new cases being reported daily, so that means that the number of new cases are still significant but the number is coming down except for Russia and Eastern Europe where we are still seeing the rise.”

The coronavirus has infected more than 423,186 people in Russia and killed at least 5,031 people, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. It is the third largest coronavirus outbreak in the world, behind only the U.S. and Brazil. —Will Feuer

Read CNBC’s previous coronavirus live coverage here: Moody’s cuts India’s rating to the lowest investment grade