COVID-19 updates: Anti-vaccine protesters halt vaccinations at Dodger Stadium

Demonstrators carrying anti-mask and anti-vaccine signs blocked the entrance.

A pandemic of the novel coronavirus has now infected more than 102.5 million people worldwide and killed over 2.2 million of them, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.


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UK variant gains ground in Netherlands

The Netherlands is battling two epidemics of the novel coronavirus: one against its existing variants, in which cases are declining, and "another epidemic involving the U.K. variant, in which infections are increasing," the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment said in a situation report released Tuesday.

The so-called U.K. variant, first identified in England last September, has caused a massive jump in COVID-19 hospitalizations in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

In the Netherlands, government officials said they were "gravely concerned about the U.K. variant." Over the weekend they introduced a nighttime curfew which has sparked riots.

Over the last two weeks, the Netherlands has reported an 11.7% positivity rate for COVID-19 tests.

ABC News’ Christine Theodorou contributed to this report.


Global case count climbs over 100 million

The worldwide number of people who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 surpassed 100 million on Tuesday, according to real-time data collected by Johns Hopkins University. The United States accounts for over 25 million of those cases.

For perspective, only 14 countries in the world have populations over 100 million, according to the latest data from the World Bank Group.

The grim milestone comes just over one year since the first COVID-19 case was confirmed in Wuhan, China, on Dec. 31, 2019.


COVID-19 deaths in UK top 100,000

The number of people who have died from COVID-19 in the United Kingdom has surpassed 100,000, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Tuesday.

"It's hard to compute the sorrow contained in that grim statistic," Johnson said.

More than 35,000 people in the U.K. are hospitalized with COVID-19, which is "substantially" above the peak in April, according to Johnson.

The number of people testing positive for the disease remains high but is decreasing slowly, with 20,089 new cases reported Tuesday, according to Johnson.

ABC News’ Christine Theodorou contributed to this report.


Boston Marathon to be held in October if road races are allowed

This year's Boston Marathon will be held on Oct. 11, if road races are allowed in Massachusetts' reopening plan at that time, according to the Boston Athletic Association.

A virtual race will also be offered as an option to runners.

"While it was of course the right thing to do, canceling the 2020 Boston Marathon for the first time in its 124-year history was one of the hardest announcements to make," Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said in a statement Tuesday.

"Today, I'm filled with hope, as we set our sights on October for the running of the 125th Boston Marathon," he added. "We have a ways to go before we're out of the woods, but guided by sound judgment and the advice of our public health experts, I am hopeful that we'll get to enjoy the return of one of Boston's most storied traditions this fall."

ABC News' Leo Mayorga contributed to this report.


Fauci describes what it was like working with Trump

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert, opened up about his experience working with former U.S. President Donald Trump in an interview with The New York Times that was published Sunday.

When COVID-19 began to rapidly spread in the northeastern part of the country last year, particularly in New York City, Fauci said Trump had "almost a reflex response" to try to "minimize" the situation.

"I would try to express the gravity of the situation, and the response of the president was always leaning toward, 'Well, it's not that bad, right?' And I would say, 'Yes, it is that bad,'" Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the newspaper. "It was almost a reflex response, trying to coax you to minimize it. Not saying, 'I want you to minimize it,' but, 'Oh, really, was it that bad?'"

Fauci, who was a key member of the Trump administration's coronavirus task force, said another thing that made him "really concerned" was the former president taking input from non-experts on unproven methods to treat COVID-19, like hydroxychloroquine.

"It was clear that he was getting input from people who were calling him up, I don’t know who, people he knew from business, saying, 'Hey, I heard about this drug, isn't it great?' or, 'Boy, this convalescent plasma is really phenomenal,'" Fauci told the newspaper. "And I would try to, you know, calmly explain that you find out if something works by doing an appropriate clinical trial; you get the information, you give it a peer review. And he’d say, 'Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, this stuff really works.'"

"He would take just as seriously their opinion -- based on no data, just anecdote -- that something might really be important," Fauci added. "That’s when my anxiety started to escalate."

When the leadership of the White House coronavirus task force changed hands last February, with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence coordinating the government's response and Trump at the podium taking questions from reporters during the press briefings, Fauci said it went from "the standard kind of scientifically based, public-health-based meetings" to "the anecdotally driven situations, the minimization, the president surrounding himself with people saying things that didn’t make any scientific sense."

"Then I started getting anxious that this was not going in the right direction," he told the newspaper. "We would say things like: 'This is an outbreak. Infectious diseases run their own course unless one does something to intervene.' And then he would get up and start talking about, 'It’s going to go away, it’s magical, it’s going to disappear.'"

That's when Fauci said it became clear to him that he needed to speak up, even if it meant contradicting the president.

"He would say something that clearly was not correct, and then a reporter would say, 'Well, let’s hear from Dr. Fauci.' I would have to get up and say, 'No, I’m sorry, I do not think that is the case,' he told the newspaper. "It isn’t like I took any pleasure in contradicting the president of the United States. I have a great deal of respect for the office. But I made a decision that I just had to. Otherwise I would be compromising my own integrity, and be giving a false message to the world. If I didn’t speak up, it would be almost tacit approval that what he was saying was OK."

This upset Trump's "inner circle," Fauci said.

"That’s when we started getting into things I felt were unfortunate and somewhat nefarious -- namely, allowing Peter Navarro to write an editorial in USA Today saying I’m wrong on most of the things I say," he told the newspaper. "Or to have the White House press office send out a detailed list of things I said that turned out to be not true -- all of which were nonsense because they were all true. The very press office that was making decisions as to whether I can go on a TV show or talk to you."

Fauci said there were a couple times where Trump even called him personally to say, "Hey, why aren’t you more positive? You’ve got to take a positive attitude. Why are you so negativistic? Be more positive."

Fauci said he and his family have received death threats, beginning last March, and that his wife once suggested he consider quitting.

"But I felt that if I stepped down, that would leave a void. Someone’s got to not be afraid to speak out the truth," he told the newspaper. "Even if I wasn’t very effective in changing everybody's minds, the idea that they knew that nonsense could not be spouted without my pushing back on it, I felt was important. I think in the big picture, I felt it would be better for the country and better for the cause for me to stay, as opposed to walk away."