Tag Archives: COVID-19

A day in the life of an Amazon courier on the frontlines of the U.S. pandemic

By Nathan Frandino and Shannon Stapleton

DUBLIN, Calif. (Reuters) – Excelso Sabulao delivers groceries for Amazon.com Inc in California so he can help provide his parents an income. Now, with endless interactions at stores and at homes during a pandemic, he worries his work will kill them.

“I’m just putting my faith in God that, you know, somehow while doing this, I’m going to be spared,” he said. “Once I get it, I’m going to spread it at home. And you know, it’s like bringing (a) death sentence to my parents.”

Sabulao, 35, is one of countless Amazon contractors shuttling food and staples that consumers depend on to their doorsteps, with nearly all of the U.S. population under government stay-at-home orders. Yet he and other drivers say they feel short-changed by Amazon for not giving them more pay or protections, as frontline workers in a global pandemic.

On Monday morning, Sabulao commuted about an hour to Dublin, a city in the San Francisco Bay Area, to pick up grocery orders from Amazon-owned Whole Foods. He lives in Stockton with his mother, who suffered a mild stroke three years ago, and his father, who is on a virus-related leave from Walmart Inc. For Sabulao, taking care of his parents – vulnerable to the effects of the coronavirus, he said – is part of Filipino culture.

Donning a white face mask, Sabulao towed two shopping carts overflowing with brown paper bags that were stamped with a logo for Amazon’s loyalty club Prime. He started loading his car in a parking spot for Amazon Flex, a program that lets contractors like himself sign up for delivery times with their own vehicles. He quickly filled up the trunk and began lining bags and other packages along the back seat of his car.

The harrowing part of the shift was over. What Sabulao had feared most, he said, was having to fetch those orders from the Whole Foods staging area where other drivers stood side by side, disregarding health officials’ recommendation to stay 6 feet (1.8 meters) apart. Sabulao had to open the same storage coolers that they did, and he generally has no time to use a wipe, he said.

“It’s making me paranoid,” said Sabulao. “You’re handling stuff that other people already put their hands into, and maybe if they have coughed – I don’t know.”

Amazon said gloves, masks and sanitizer are available at the Dublin Whole Foods store and across its facilities. “We remain committed to keeping our teams healthy and safe,” the company said, adding that it was requiring social distancing among staff and telling delivery workers to stay further apart from customers.

Sabulao took off his mask and started driving. At his destination, he scanned a code on grocery packages using his smartphone and took those to the shopper’s doorstep.

He has wanted to minimize customer contact as much as possible. Amazon’s app lets him text shoppers to inquire where to leave the items and share his estimated time of arrival.

Still, across 21 deliveries Monday, there was no avoiding face time. One woman was in her driveway when Sabulao arrived, so he put the groceries down next to her car. At another home, a customer opened the door, got on her knees and started wiping down the items she had ordered.

The work at times has been worth the trouble. Sabulao recalled how around the start of the pandemic, one shopper’s generous tip bumped his $10 pay up to $83 for a delivery that lasted less than 30 minutes. He earned $289 in over seven hours Monday, more than half of which came from tips. Earning $200 is typical for that amount of time, he said.

Increasingly he feels the reward is changing. Now rare surge pay for warehouse deliveries means he may make less than before, and he fears his personal supply of wipes will run out. He wishes Amazon would give him and other contractors sanitizer.

“We’re risking our lives, literally, risking our life delivering packages,” he said. But quitting is not an option.

“I have bills to pay. That’s it,” he said.

(Reporting by Nathan Frandino and Shannon Stapleton in Dublin, California; Writing and additional reporting by Jeffrey Dastin; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

U.S. coronavirus deaths top 15,000: Reuters tally

(Reuters) – U.S. deaths due to coronavirus topped 15,700 on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally, although there are signs the pandemic might be nearing a peak.

U.S. officials warned Americans to expect alarming numbers of coronavirus deaths this week, even as an influential university model on Wednesday scaled back its projected U.S. pandemic death toll by 26% to 60,000.

U.S. deaths set new daily records on Tuesday and Wednesday with over 1,900 new deaths reported each day, according to a Reuters tally. (Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2w7hX9T)

Only Italy has more deaths with 17,669 deaths reported on Wednesday. Spain reported 15,238 deaths on Thursday.

European countries, including hardest-hit Italy and Spain, have started looking ahead to easing lockdowns but their coronavirus-related fatality rates have fluctuated after initially showing a decline.

In Spain after two days of increases, the daily death toll decreased on Thursday.

Italy imposed a nationwide lockdown on March 9 to slow the spread of the virus and Spain followed on March 14. New York state required all residents to stay home except for essential businesses on March 20 and now more than 94% of Americans are under similar orders but the United States has resisted a national stay-at-home order.

(Writing by Lisa Shumaker; Editing by Alistair Bell)

Speed of coronavirus deaths shock doctors as New York toll hits new high

By Nick Brown and Gabriella Borter

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York state, epicenter of America’s coronavirus crisis, set another single-day record of COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday, as veteran doctors and nurses voiced astonishment at the speed with which patients were deteriorating and dying.

The number of known coronavirus infections in New York state alone approached 150,000 on Wednesday, even as authorities warned that the official death tally may understate the true number because it omits those who have perished at home.

“Every number is a face, ” said New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who ordered flags flown at half-staff across New York in memory of the victims.

“This virus attacked the vulnerable and attacked the weak, and it’s our job as a society to protect the vulnerable.”

Doctors and nurses say elderly patients and those with underlying health conditions are not the only ones who appear relatively well one moment and at death’s door the next. It happens to the young and healthy, too.

Patients “look fine, feel fine, then you turn around and they’re unresponsive,” said Diana Torres, a nurse at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, the center of the nation’s worst outbreak. “I’m paranoid, scared to walk out of their room.”

Nearly 430,000 cases of COVID-19, the highly infectious lung disease caused by the coronavirus, were confirmed in the United States as of Wednesday afternoon, including more than 14,700 deaths. For the second straight day the virus killed at least 1,900 in a 24-hour period.

Cuomo said 779 people had died in the past day in his state. New Jersey reported 275 had died there. Both totals exceeded one-day records from just a day earlier.

Despite the grim figures, Cuomo said overall trends still appeared positive. Cuomo cited a drop in new hospitalizations and other data as evidence that New York’s social-distancing restrictions were “bending the curve,” helping to gain some control over the infection rate.

New York is one of 42 states where governors have issued “stay-at-home” orders and closed all non-essential workplaces.

While public health experts say such measures are vital for controlling the contagion, the restrictions have strangled the U.S. economy, leading to widespread layoffs, upheavals on Wall Street and projections of a severe recession.

Cuomo said the loss of life would likely continue at current levels or increase in days ahead as critically ill patients die after prolonged bouts hooked up to ventilators.

SCALING BACK TOLL

U.S. deaths due to coronavirus topped 14,700 on Wednesday, the second highest reported number in the world behind Italy, according to a Reuters tally.

New York state accounts for over a third of the U.S. total.

Officials have warned Americans to expect alarming numbers of coronavirus deaths this week, even as an influential university model on Wednesday scaled back its projected U.S. pandemic death toll by 26% to 60,000.

“We are in the midst of a week of heartache,” Vice President Mike Pence said during a White House briefing on Wednesday, but added, “we are beginning to see glimmers of hope.”

Dr. Craig Smith, surgeon-in-chief at Presbyterian Hospital’s Columbia University Medical Center in Manhattan, heralded encouraging numbers that suggested a turning tide in Wednesday’s edition of his daily newsletter to staff.

There were more discharges of patients than admissions for two days running, he said, adding: “Hosanna!”

But that comes as cold comfort to some healthcare workers on the front lines, who told Reuters they have treated patients while experiencing symptoms of the novel coronavirus themselves without being able to get tested.

In Michigan, one of the few hospital systems conducting widespread diagnostic screenings of staff, found more than 700 workers were infected – over a quarter of those tested.

The continued test kit shortages – even for the workers most at risk – is “scandalous” and a serious threat to the patients they treat, said Dr. Art Caplan, a professor of bioethics at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

‘BIG BANG’

At the White House on Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump said he would like to reopen the U.S. economy with a “big bang” but not before the death toll is on the downslope.

Trump did not offer a time frame, but his chief economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, said on Tuesday a resumption of commerce was possible in four to eight weeks.

Louisiana is “beginning to see the flattening of the curve” with the number of new coronavirus cases reported in the past 24 hours – 746 – lower than recent days, Governor John Bel Edwards said. Louisiana had been one of the nation’s hot spots.

California, like New York, had one of its highest single-day death tolls with 68 people dying of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, Governor Gavin Newsom said. The state may not see its infection curve flattening until the end of May, requiring weeks more of social distancing, officials say.

New York City officials said a recent surge in people dying at home suggests the most populous U.S. city may be undercounting the loss of life.

“I think that’s a very real possibility,” Cuomo told his daily news briefing.

So far New York City’s announced death toll has reflected only laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 diagnoses, mostly at hospitals. At least 200 people are believed to be dying at home in the city every day during the pandemic, authorities said.

Pence warned that Philadelphia and Pittsburgh were cities of “particular concern” as a possible future flash points in the epidemic.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely, Nick Brown, Jonathan Allen, Doina Chiacu, Susan Heavey, Maria Caspani, Brad Brooks, Susan Cornwell, Nathan Layne, Lisa Lambert, Stephanie Kelly, and Gabriella Borter; Additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Writing by Will Dunham and Bill Tarrant; Editing by Bill Berkrot, Cynthia Osterman and Michael Perry)

250-year-old U.S. Easter tradition’s horns silenced by coronavirus pandemic

By Rich McKay

(Reuters) – Every Easter Sunday for almost 250 years, residents of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, have been awakened by small groups of musicians playing the hymn “Sleepers, Wake,” before the Home Moravian church’s sunrise service.

Not this year.

The groups of trumpeters and tuba players that proceeded through the streets during the Revolutionary War, Civil War and World Wars One and Two have been silenced this year because of the novel coronavirus.

“We are grief-stricken,” said the Rev. Ginny Tobiassen, the 60-year-old pastor of the Home Moravian church, which is part of a Protestant denomination dating back to the 15th century. “This is a very, very hard thing to bear for every Moravian. But we accept the way this has to be.”

The church – like many houses of worship across the United States – is following health officials’ urging to cancel all social gatherings of 10 or more people. A pastor and a small handful of musicians will gather in the church for a service that will be broadcast on local television and the internet.

They will go on without the spectacle of up to 300 musicians playing in a call-and-response style through the town, a tradition dating back to 1772 that in recent years has drawn thousands of believers and spectators before the 6 a.m. service.

The church, which was founded in 1753 – before the founding of the United States – has closed its doors to members only once in its history, Tobiassen said. That was in 1918, during the

Spanish flu pandemic that killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide and about 675,000 Americans, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“And that was in the fall,” Tobiassen said. “Our Easter service was held as normal.”

The church has a long history of missionary work around the globe and stones at the church’s cemeteries are flat against the ground to show their universal humility and equality before God.

About 6,000 people including many non-members typically join in the Easter Service, considered the holiest day on the Christian calendar. This year’s service, although broadcast, will be the same as every year, Tobiassen said.

There is no sermon and a pastor leads the crowd in a liturgical, communal prayer read aloud by the faithful in call- and-response style.

The pastor leading the service this year is the Rev. Chaz Snider, chairman of the Southern Moravian Council of Elders, who will lead the small group inside Home Moravian, all sitting at a safe distance apart.

They will have to forgo the face masks that the CDC recommends that people use for protection.

“You can’t sing or play a horn through a mask,” Tobiassen said.

Snider, in a letter to the 12 congregations in his church province, wrote of his regrets over the lack of public participation in this Sunday’s service.

“This was a difficult decision to make, and this Easter will be different for all of us,” he wrote. “But we have faith in God who brings hope out of fear. So set your alarm, brew a cup of coffee, and join us on your back porch as we proclaim the resurrection of our Lord.”

(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Scott Malone and Peter Cooney)

Coming next from the Fed: How much for Main Street?

By Howard Schneider

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Reserve responded fast to the coronavirus crisis with open-ended programs to keep financial markets running and ensure major companies could raise cash as they usually do through large capital markets.

By forcing major parts of the economy to simply stop operating, however, the current crisis poses a direct threat to the hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses that don’t raise money by issuing stocks or bonds, but rely on myriad combinations of bank loans, owner’s capital and, in some cases, personal credit cards or home equity loans.

The Fed, in coordination with the Treasury Department, is planning a Main Street Lending Facility as one of its linchpin programs in the crisis. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Wednesday he hoped to announce details of the program this week.

Ahead of that, the following summarizes what is known about the Main Street program and what analysts who watch the Fed closely think it might look like:

WHO WILL PAY FOR IT?

In the $2.3 trillion emergency response bill enacted on March 27, $454 billion is set aside for the U.S. Treasury to use for new programs at the Fed, including the one for “Main Street.”

HOW BIG WILL IT BE?

This is the crisis where “trillions” have become the go-to denomination. Joseph Brusuelas, an economist with business consulting firm RSM who has followed the Fed’s crisis response closely, expects the Fed to receive an $85 billion capital contribution from Treasury and turn that into $1 trillion of lending power for businesses.

HOW DOES THE FED DO THAT?

The Fed gets its punch through “leverage,” or taking a given amount of money from Treasury and allowing financial institutions to create perhaps 10 times that amount in credit. The Fed is not supposed to take losses, since that would amount to laying out taxpayers’ money that it is not authorized to spend. But most loans don’t go bad: in effect every dollar provided by Treasury allows many more dollars of lending, because most of it will be repaid. The Treasury’s funds are there to cover only the small portion expected to go bad.

HOW WILL IT WORK?

The Fed is restricted from lending directly to companies or individuals. But it can provide financing to a “special purpose vehicle” that then either lends to or buys assets from, say, a bank that does provide business and consumer loans. Because those lending institutions now know they can send the loans to the SPV, they are willing to make deals with companies and consumers even in a risky environment. Cornerstone Macro analyst Roberto Perli said the Fed’s SPV could either buy loans directly, one at a time, from banks, or have banks bundle them into larger securities.

WHO WILL BE ELIGIBLE?

This may be the most difficult issue. Large companies get credit ratings from independent agencies such as Standard & Poor’s or Moody’s, and the Fed has used those credit ratings to draw a line around which companies are eligible for its programs. For “Main Street” lending, the Fed may have to lean on banks to assess the finances of midsize companies and sift those struggling only because of the coronavirus from those that were struggling anyway. The focus may be on firms with 500 to 10,000 employees, since those below the cutoff can get small business loans and those above it typically use the capital markets. As of early 2019 there were about 18,000 companies with more than 500 workers – including more than 2,000 midsize manufacturers that are an important piece of the U.S. industrial base.

(Reporting by Howard Schneider; Editing by Dan Burns and Andrea Ricci)

U.S. companies criticized for cutting jobs rather than investor payouts

By Alwyn Scott, Ross Kerber, Jessica DiNapoli and Rebecca Spalding

NEW YORK/BOSTON (Reuters) – U.S. companies laying off workers in response to the coronavirus pandemic but still paying dividends and buying back shares are drawing criticism from labor unions, pension fund advisers, lawmakers and corporate governance experts.

While most U.S. companies are scaling back payouts after a decade in which the amount of money paid to investors through buybacks and dividends more than tripled, some are maintaining their policies despite the economic pain.

Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd <RCL.N>, Halliburton Co <HAL.N>, General Motors Co <GM.N> and McDonald’s Corp <MCD.N> have all laid off staff, cut their hours, or slashed salaries while maintaining payouts, according to a Reuters review of regulatory filings, company announcements and company officials.

“This is the time for large companies to try to help, for systemic reasons, to keep things flowing,” said Ken Bertsch, executive director of the Council of Institutional Investors. The council’s members include public pension funds and endowments that manage assets worth about $4 trillion.

Royal Caribbean, which has halted its cruises in response to the pandemic and borrowed to boost its liquidity to more than $3.6 billion, said it began laying off contract workers in mid-March, though the moves did not affect its full-time employees.

The company has not suspended its remaining $600 million share buyback program, which expires in May, or its dividend, which totaled $602 million last year and is set quarterly.

“We continue to take decisive actions to protect (our) financial and liquidity positions,” Royal Caribbean spokesman Jonathon Fishman said. He declined to comment specifically on the layoffs or shareholder payouts.

While Royal Caribbean’s rival Carnival Corp <CCL.N> has also laid off contract workers, it has suspended dividends and buybacks as it raised more than $6 billion in capital markets to weather the coronavirus storm.

UNEMPLOYMENT SURGE

Goldman Sachs analysts forecast this week that S&P 500 companies would cut dividends in 2020 by an average of 50% because of the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

For a graphic on S&P 500 shareholder payouts from 2009 to 2018, please click on: https://reut.rs/349G2JV

While there has been criticism of companies maintaining investor payouts, only those receiving financial support from the U.S. government under a $2.3 trillion stimulus package are obliged to suspend share buybacks.

Layoffs contributed to U.S. unemployment skyrocketing last month. Jobless claims topped 6.6 million in the week ended March 28 – double the record set the prior week and far above the previous record of 695,000 set in 1982.

Companies say job cuts are necessary to offset a plunge in revenue but their critics say they should consider turning off the spigots to shareholders before letting employees go.

“If companies are paying dividends and doing buybacks, they do not have to lay off workers,” said William Lazonick, a corporate governance expert at the University of Massachusetts.

Workers at franchised McDonald’s restaurants say they are getting fewer shifts since dining areas were closed in March, leaving only carry-out and drive-through services open.

Alma Ceballos, 31, who has worked at a franchised McDonald’s near San Francisco for 14 years, said she could not pay her rent after her schedule was cut to 16 hours from 40 and her husband, a janitor at Apple Inc’s <AAPL.O> Cupertino, California, campus was laid off.

McDonald’s, which has suspended buybacks but maintained its annual dividend, worth $3.6 billion in 2019, told Reuters its staffing and opening hours were not related to “making a choice between employees and dividends”.

About 95% of its U.S. restaurants are run by franchisees who decide staffing. McDonald’s said it was offering rent deferrals and other help to keep franchises open and employing workers.

“McDonald’s could commit to 30 days of income for all workers,” Mary Kay Henry, president of the labor union SEIU which has 2 million members, said in an interview with Reuters. “Corporations need to pay their fair share here.”

‘IT’S JUST WRONG’

General Motors has halted normal production in North America and temporarily reduced cash pay for salaried workers by 20%. It paid its first-quarter dividend on March 20 and has a month before declaring its next dividend, a spokeswoman said, adding that GM would assess economic conditions before deciding.

“Our focus in the near term is to protect the health of our employees and customers, ensure we have ample liquidity for a very wide range of scenarios, and implement austerity measures to preserve cash,” spokeswoman Lauren Langille said.

Oilfield services firm Halliburton furloughed about 3,500 workers in its Houston office starting on March 23, according to a letter sent to the Texas Workforce Commission obtained by Reuters. It has also cut 350 positions in Oklahoma.

Halliburton cited disruption from the coronavirus as well as plunging oil prices as the reason for the furlough. In March, it paid its first-quarter dividend to shareholders as planned.

A Halliburton spokeswoman declined to comment on the furlough and the company’s dividend policy.

Some of the companies laying off workers while still paying out shareholders, such as General Motors, signed an initiative last year from the Business Roundtable, a group of chief executives, pledging to make business decisions in the interest of employees and other stakeholders, not just shareholders.

Large asset managers such as BlackRock and Vanguard have cited managing “human capital” as a priority for companies in which they invest. Yet they have been reluctant to publicly press companies to avoid layoffs during the crisis.

Vanguard told Reuters it “recognizes the need for companies to exercise judgment and flexibility as they balance short- and long-term business considerations”.

BlackRock did not respond with a statement when contacted for comment.

“Profits should be shared with the workers who actually create them,” U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin, a long-standing critic of share buybacks, told Reuters in an email.

“It’s just wrong for big corporations to reward the wealthy or top executives with more stock buybacks, while closing facilities and laying off workers.”

(Reporting by Alwyn Scott, Jessica DiNapoli and Rebecca Spalding in New York and Ross Kerber in Boston; Additional reporting by Hilary Russ in New York; Editing by Greg Roumeliotis and David Clarke)

Italy’s daily coronavirus death toll falls, but new cases accelerate

ROME (Reuters) – Deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy rose by 542 on Wednesday, a lower tally than the 604 the day before, but the number of new cases pushed higher to 3,836 compared with a previous 3,039.

The total death toll since the outbreak came to light on Feb. 21 rose to 17,669, the Civil Protection Agency said, the highest in the world.

The number of confirmed cases climbed to 139,422, the third highest global tally behind that of the United States and Spain.

There were 3,693 people in intensive care on Wednesday against 3,792 on Tuesday — a fifth consecutive daily decline, underscoring growing hopes that the illness is on the retreat thanks to a nationwide lockdown introduced on March 9.

Of those originally infected, 26,491 were declared recovered against 24,392 a day earlier.

(Reporting by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Gavin Jones)

UK PM Johnson ‘clinically stable’ in intensive care battling COVID-19

UK PM Johnson ‘clinically stable’ in intensive care battling COVID-19
By Elizabeth Piper and Kylie MacLellan

LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was “clinically stable” in intensive care on Wednesday and responding to treatment for COVID-19 complications, amid questions about how key coronavirus crisis decisions would be made in his absence.

Johnson, who tested positive nearly two weeks ago, was admitted to St Thomas’ hospital on Sunday evening with a persistent high temperature and cough but his condition deteriorated and he was rushed into an intensive care unit.

The 55-year-old British leader has received oxygen support but was not put on a ventilator and his designated deputy, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, said he would soon be back at the helm as the world faces one of its gravest public health crisis in a century.

Downing Street said that Johnson was not working, but was able to contact people if needed.

“The prime minister remains clinically stable and is responding to treatment. He is in good spirits,” Johnson’s spokesman said, similar to what Downing Street has been saying over the past two days.

As Johnson battled the novel coronavirus in hospital, the United Kingdom was entering what scientists said was the deadliest phase of the outbreak and grappling with the question of when to lift the lockdown.

Inside the government, ministers were debating how long the world’s fifth-largest economy could afford to be shut down, and the long-term implications of one of the most stringent set of emergency controls in peacetime history.

The United Kingdom’s total hospital deaths from COVID-19 rose by a record 786 to 6,159 as of 1600 GMT on April 6, the latest publicly available death toll, though just 213,181 people out of the population of around 68 million have been tested.

Britain was in no position to lift the shutdown as the peak of the outbreak was still over a week away, London Mayor Sadiq Khan said.

“We are nowhere near lifting the lockdown,” Khan said.

ACTING PM RAAB?

Johnson was breathing without any assistance and had not required respiratory support, said Raab, who said the prime minister, whom he described as “a fighter”, remained in charge.

There are few precedents in British history of a prime minister being incapacitated at a time of major crisis, though Winston Churchill suffered a stroke while in office in 1953 and Tony Blair twice underwent heart treatment in the 2000s.

Johnson has delegated some authority to Raab, who was appointed foreign minister less than a year ago, though any major decisions – such as when to lift the lockdown – would in effect need the blessing of Johnson’s cabinet.

Britain’s uncodified constitution – an unwieldy collection of sometimes ancient and contradictory precedents – offers no clear, formal “Plan B”. In essence, it is the prime minister’s call and, if he is incapacitated, then up to cabinet to decide.

Raab said ministers had “very clear directions, very clear instructions” from Johnson but it was not clear what would happen if crucial decisions needed to be made which strayed from the approved plan.

Michael Heseltine, who served as deputy prime minister to John Major in the 1990s, told the Telegraph Raab’s position needed to be clarified.

Former Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind said most major decisions over the coronavirus strategy had been taken with the important exception of whether or not to ease the lockdown, a call that will need to be made in the next week or soon after.

“That is not just a medical judgement. It has to be a balance between the medical considerations and the consequences of leaving the whole economy shut down,” Rifkind told BBC TV.

While such a decision would be made by cabinet even if Johnson were not unwell, he said Britain’s prime minister had authority and sway as the “primus inter pares” – Latin for “first among equals” – others did not.

“He very often can steer the direction in a particular way. Dominic Raab doesn’t have the authority nor would he claim it,” Rifkind said.

(Additional reporting by Kate Holton, Costas Pitas, Sarah Young, and David Milliken; writing by Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Nick Macfie)

Factbox: Latest on the spread of the coronavirus around the world

(Reuters) – The number of confirmed infections of the novel coronavirus exceeded 1.41 million globally and the death toll crossed 83,400, according to a Reuters tally as of 1400 GMT.

DEATHS AND INFECTIONS

– For an interactive graphic tracking the global spread, open https://tmsnrt.rs/3aIRuz7 in an external browser.

– U.S.-focused tracker with state-by-state and county map, open https://tmsnrt.rs/2w7hX9T in an external browser.

EUROPE

– European Union finance ministers failed in all-night talks to agree on more economic support, spurring Spain to warn the bloc’s future was on the line without a joint response to the crisis.

– The president of the European Union’s main science organisation quit over frustration at the response to the pandemic.

– Italian ports cannot be considered safe because of the epidemic and will not let charity migrant boats dock, the government ruled.

– British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was “clinically stable” in intensive care on Wednesday and responding to treatment.

– Switzerland’s government, which said its economy could contract by as much 10.4% this year, extended the nation’s restrictions for another week but said a gradual loosening of measures would begin this month.

– The World Health Organization’s regional director described the outbreak in Europe as “very concerning” and urged governments to give “very careful consideration” before relaxing measures to control its spread.

– Pope Francis condemned people he said were exploiting the pandemic to turn a quick profit and decried the “hypocrisy” of how some politicians are dealing with the crisis.

– The European Union is drawing up common rules for using mobile apps to track the spread, aiming to make better use of the technology and address privacy concerns.

– Refugees in eastern German are sewing face masks for pensioners in a retirement home.

AMERICAS

– Some 60,000 Americans could die in the pandemic, a university model often cited by U.S. and state policymakers projected, a 26% reduction in its most recent forecast.

– U.S. health officials are planning ways for the country to return to normal if virus efforts work, the top U.S. infectious disease official said on Wednesday.

– Democratic congressional leaders said they would back the Trump administration’s request for another $250 billion for small businesses, but said the bill must include more funding for hospitals, local governments and food assistance.

– Maryland-based biotechnology company Novavax Inc said it had identified a vaccine candidate and would start human trials in mid-May.

– U.S. immigration officials have rapidly deported nearly 400 migrant children intercepted at the U.S.-Mexico border in the past two weeks under new rules.

– Brazil’s health minister said the country faced a “serious problem” getting enough mechanical ventilators and had spoken to China to try and ensure it would be able to fill an order for face masks.

– Ecuador is preparing an emergency burial ground in Guayaquil, the country’s largest city, to address a shortage of burial plots.

ASIA

– The Chinese city of Wuhan ended its two-month lockdown, even as a small northern city ordered restrictions on its residents amid concern about a second wave of infections.

– India is considering plans to seal off hotspots in Delhi, Mumbai and parts of the south while easing restrictions elsewhere as a way out of a three-week lockdown that has caused deep economic distress.

– Tokyo recorded its biggest daily jump on Wednesday since the start of the pandemic, the city’s governor said on the first day of a state of emergency.

– Expatriates in Hong Kong are buying up masks to send to family and friends back home as supplies return to shops.

– Thailand automatically extends visas for all foreigners who entered legally, to prevent long queues at immigration centres and stem the spread, a senior immigration official said.

– East Timor’s prime minister withdrew his resignation as the government approved a $250-million fund.

MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

– Most Middle Eastern countries are seeing worrying daily increases in cases but the region still has a chance to contain its spread, a senior WHO official said.

– Lebanon’s food importers, already hit by a dollar crunch, have struggled to book new cargoes as the pandemic threatens supplies and sparks fears of more painful price hikes.

– Egypt will extend a nationwide night-time curfew by 15 days until April 23.

– Ethiopia declared a state of emergency.

ECONOMIC FALLOUT

– World equity markets edged higher and oil prices stabilized on Wednesday on hopes the coronavirus pandemic is peaking and that more government stimulus measures could be on the way. [MKTS/GLOB]

– The European Central Bank told euro zone finance ministers the area could need fiscal measures worth up to 1.5 trillion euros this year.

– Germany’s economy, Europe’s largest, will probably shrink by 9.8% in the second quarter, its biggest decline since records began, the country’s leading think tanks said.

– The pandemic has cost Austria $12 billion so far, or 2.8% of its annual gross domestic product, according to its central bank.

– China’s government will work on expanding domestic demand and actively boosting consumption as the pandemic makes economic development more difficult, state television reported.

– A second stimulus package India is poised to announce in coming days will be worth around $13 billion and focus on helping small and medium businesses, senior officials said.

– Australia’s conservative government will subsidise the wages of 6 million people for at least the next six months.

– Hong Kong announced relief measures worth $17.7 billion to help businesses and people crippled by the outbreak to stay afloat.

– Nearly 140 campaign groups and charities urged the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, G20 governments and private creditors to help the world’s poorest countries by cancelling debt payments.

(Compiled by Sarah Morland and Milla Nissi; Editing by Tomasz Janowski and Arun Koyyur)

U.S. coronavirus death projection lowered but official warns of ‘second wave’

By Peter Szekely and Maria Caspani

NEW YORK (Reuters) – An influential university model on the U.S. coronavirus pandemic on Wednesday scaled back its projected death toll by 26% to 60,000 but a federal health official warned of a second wave of infections if Americans relax “social distancing” practices.

The downward revision in the death toll in the University of Washington model – often cited by U.S. and state policymakers – coincides with comments by some political leaders that caseloads may have reached a plateau in certain areas.

Those assessments in recent days, including an apparent leveling out in hospitalizations in New York state – the U.S. epicenter of the pandemic – are tempered by a persistent climb in the U.S. death toll, which rose by more than 1,900 on Tuesday as some 30,000 new infections were reported.

New York Mayor Bill De Blasio told a briefing on Wednesday that coronavirus-related hospitalizations in the most populous U.S. city had stabilized and that the need for ventilators was lower than projected.

“In the last few days we’ve actually seen fewer ventilators needed that were projected,” the mayor said.

Even that revised forecast suggested months of pain ahead for the United States. All told, about 400,000 U.S. infections have been reported, along with roughly 13,000 deaths.

“What’s really important is that people don’t turn these early signs of hope into releasing from the 30 days to stop the spread – it’s really critical,” said Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, referring to guidelines aimed at reducing the spread of the virus.

“If people start going out again and socially interacting, we could see a really acute second wave,” Birx added.

The pandemic has upended American life, with 94% of the population ordered to stay at home and nearly 10 million people losing their jobs in the past two weeks.

Hospitals have been inundated with cases of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus, resulting in shortages of medical equipment and protective garments.

The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation model is one of several that the White House task force has cited. It now projects U.S. deaths at more than 60,000 by Aug. 4, down from the nearly 82,000 fatalities it had forecast on Tuesday.

The White House coronavirus task force has previously projected 100,000 to 240,000 Americans could die.

The institute also moved up its projected peak in the number to U.S. deaths to this Sunday, when it predicted 2,212 people will succumb to the disease. The revision moves forward the projected peak by four days, suggesting the strain on the country’s healthcare system will begin to abate a little sooner than previously expected.

AT-HOME DEATHS UNTRACKED

New York’s de Blasio estimated an undercount in the death toll of 100 to 200 people per day who are dying at home but excluded from the city’s rapidly growing coronavirus count. So far the city’s announced death toll has reflected only COVID-19 diagnoses confirmed in a laboratory.

But after a spike in the number of people dying at home, the city will now try to quantify how many of those died from coronavirus-related causes and add that to the its official death toll, New York’s health department said.

“Every single measure of this pandemic is an undercount. Every. Single. One,” Mark Levine, chairman of the City Council’s health committee, wrote on Twitter. “Confirmed cases? Skewed by lack of testing. Hospitalizations? Skewed by huge # of sick people we are sending home because there’s no room in ERs. Deaths? Massive undercount because of dying at home.”

The state of New York accounts for more than a third of U.S. confirmed coronavirus cases, and nearly half the cumulative death toll.

Authorities in various states in recent days have disclosed data showing that the pandemic was having a disproportionate impact on African Americans, reflecting longstanding racial inequities in health outcomes in the United States.

De Blasio said there were “clear inequalities” in how the coronavirus is affecting his city’s population.

In New York, long weeks of fighting the pandemic were taking a toll on hospital staff, some of whom are coming down with the disease they have been fighting.

One resident doctor at New York-Presbyterian Hospital said he had been surprised by the number of hospital workers infected.

“There are people around the hospital who are sick and now they’re showing up on our patient list. … It’s hard not to see yourself in them,” the resident said. “A lot of us feel like we are being put in harm’s way.”

(Reporting by Peter Szekely, Doina Chiacu, Susan Heavey and Gabriella Borter; Writing by Daniel Trotta and Will Dunham; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)