MADRID (Reuters) – Spain registered 738 fatalities from the coronavirus over the past 24 hours in the steepest increase of the death toll since the epidemic hit the country, the health ministry reported on Wednesday.
The number of reported deaths from the virus rose to 3,434 from 2,696 on Tuesday, the ministry said. The overall number of cases soared to 47,610 from 39,673 on Tuesday.
(Reporting by Inti Landauro, editing by Andrei Khalip)
New York takes new steps against coronavirus as impact spreads across U.S.
By Maria Caspani and Susan Heavey
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – While the burdens of the coronavirus intensified across the United States, New York City on Wednesday took aggressive new steps to battle the crisis, closing streets and asking people to stop playing basketball and other contact sports in public parks.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said more than 30,800 people had tested positive for the virus in his state, the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, and more than 17,800 in New York City alone. The state has reported 285 deaths and roughly half the country’s reported infections.
State measures to control the coronavirus appear to be working as the rate of hospitalizations has slowed in recent days, Cuomo said. “Now that is almost too good to be true,…” he said. “This is a very good sign and a positive sign, again not 100% sure it holds, or it’s accurate but the arrows are headed in the right direction.”
He described street closures in New York City, where more than 8 million people live, as a pilot program and said sports like basketball would be banned in city parks, first on a voluntary basis as long as people comply.
With closures to vehicles, the intention is to allow pedestrians to walk in the streets to enable greater “social distancing” to avoid infections.
“Our closeness makes us vulnerable,” said Cuomo, who has emerged as a leading national voice on the coronavirus.
“We will overcome. And we will show the other communities across this country how to do it.”
Even as city officials struggled to contain the health crisis, the impact was increasingly being felt beyond the hot spots of New York, California and Washington state as Louisiana and others faced a severe crush on their healthcare systems.
U.S. President Donald Trump issued the latest major federal disaster declarations for Louisiana and Iowa late on Tuesday, freeing up federal funds to help states cope with the increasing number of cases of the dangerous respiratory disease caused by the virus that threaten to overwhelm state and local resources.
That brings to five the number of states receiving major disaster declarations from the Republican president. New York – the state with by far the most infections and deaths – was given such status last weekend as well as California and Washington state.
Louisiana, where large crowds last month celebrated Mardi Gras in New Orleans and other locations, reported a spike in infections with 1,388 total confirmed cases and 46 deaths as of mid-Tuesday, according to the Louisiana Department of Health.
Dr. Rebekah Gee, who until January was Louisiana’s health secretary and now heads up Louisiana State University’s healthcare services division, said that it was the Mardi Gras, when 1.4 million tourists descended on New Orleans, that fueled the city’s outbreak.
“It’s a highly infectious virus and Mardi Gras happened when the virus was in the United States but before the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and national leaders had really educated the public or even acknowledged the extent to which it was in the U.S.,” Gee said. “We had the president saying, ‘It’s just a few people, don’t worry about it.'”
‘FREAKING OUT’
New Orleans restaurant owner Ronnie Evans said everyone in New Orleans was “freaking out.”
“People don’t know what to expect or how long this will last. Everyone is worried about their jobs,” said Evans, 32, whose restaurant Blue Oak BBQ is just few steps from the city’s renowned Bourbon Street. The restaurant is offering takeout orders only.
“People are still coming out, but they’re scared. This is as bad as Katrina or worse,” referring to the hurricane that devastated the city in 2005.
The governors of at least 18 states have issued stay-at-home directives affecting about half the U.S. population of roughly 330 million people. The sweeping orders are aimed at slowing the spread of the pathogen but have upended daily life as schools and businesses shutter indefinitely.
A number of other U.S. states have also applied for major disaster relief status in recent days including Florida, Texas, New Jersey, North Carolina, Missouri, Maryland and South Carolina, as well as Northern Mariana Islands U.S. territory.
Nationwide, more than 53,000 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus that is particularly perilous to the elderly and people with pre-existing medical conditions, with at least 730 deaths. World Health Organization officials have said the United States could become the global epicenter of the pandemic, which first emerged late last year in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
World Health Organization expert Dr. Bruce Aylward told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program: “The U.S. is a gigantic country so it is very difficult to say something is going to happen right across the whole country. You are going to see this evolve differently in each part of the country.”
Trump on Tuesday said he wanted to re-open the country by Easter Sunday – far sooner than public health officials have said is warranted – but later told reporters he would listen to recommendations from the nation’s top health officials.
Wall Street on Wednesday was unable to sustain strong gains from Tuesday’s session as fears about the pandemic’s economic toll overshadowed optimism about sweeping fiscal and monetary stimulus to aid businesses and households.
U.S. lawmakers and the Trump administration reached a deal for a bipartisan $2 trillion stimulus package to help businesses and millions of Americans hit by the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Senate was due to vote on the legislation on Wednesday. The House of Representatives was not expected to act before Thursday.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey, Brad Brooks, Maria Caspani, Stephanie Kelly, Richard Cowan, Doina Chiacu, Patricia Zengerle and Stephanie Nebehay; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Howard Goller)
By Chad Terhune, Allison Martell and Julie Steenhuysen
(Reuters) – As the United States works overtime to screen thousands for the novel coronavirus, a new blood test offers the chance to find out who may have immunity – a potential game changer in the battle to contain infections and get the economy back on track.
Several academic laboratories and medical companies are rushing to produce these blood tests, which can quickly identify disease-fighting antibodies in people who already have been infected but may have had mild symptoms or none at all. This is different from the current, sometimes hard-to-come-by diagnostic tests that draw on a nasal swab to confirm active infection.
“Ultimately, this (antibody test) might help us figure out who can get the country back to normal,” Florian Krammer, a professor in vaccinology at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine, told Reuters. “People who are immune could be the first people to go back to normal life and start everything up again.”
Krammer and his fellow researchers have developed one of the first antibody tests in the United States for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. Krammer said his lab is busy distributing key ingredients for the tests to other organizations and sharing the testing procedure. He is transferring the work to Mount Sinai’s clinical lab this week so it can begin testing patient samples.
Antibody tests won’t face the same bureaucratic hurdles diagnostic testing initially did. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration relaxed its rules last month, and body-fluid tests can proceed to market without full agency review and approval.
Several private companies have begun selling blood tests for COVID-19 antibodies outside the United States, including California-based Biomerica Inc <BMRA.O> and South Korean test maker Sugentech Inc <253840.KQ>. Biomerica said its test sells for less than $10 and the company already has orders from Europe and the Middle East. Chembio Diagnostics Inc <CMI.O> of New York said it received a $4 million order from Brazil for its COVID-19 antibody test, and it plans a study of the test at several sites in the United States.
Such tests are relatively inexpensive and simple, usually using blood from a finger prick. Some can produce results in 10 to 15 minutes. That could make ramping up screening much easier than for diagnostic tests.
Many questions remain, including how long immunity lasts to this new virus, how accurate the tests are and how testing would roll out, according to researchers and infectious disease experts. For now, the number of people who have been able to fight off the virus is unknown.
If testing goes forward on a wider scale, some public health experts and clinicians say healthcare workers and first responders should take priority.
Detecting immunity among doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers could spare them from quarantine and enable them to keep treating the growing surge of coronavirus patients, they say. It could also bolster the ranks of first responders, police officers and other essential workers who have already been infected and have at least some period of protection from the virus, the experts say.
“If I ever get the virus and then get over it, I’ll want to get back to the front lines ASAP,” said Dr. Adams Dudley, a pulmonologist and professor at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine. “I would have a period in which I am immune, effectively making me a ‘corona blocker’ who couldn’t pass the disease on.”
‘VERY ATTRACTIVE’
Other workers sidelined by lockdowns also could potentially return to their jobs, providing a much-needed boost to the foundering U.S. economy. The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits has soared, and business activity slumped to a record low this month as the pandemic battered the manufacturing and service sectors.
Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, said companies, schools, colleges and professional sports teams could all flock to these tests. He also said a broad sample of testing could give a governor or mayor enough confidence to lift certain restrictions on businesses and schools if there is a strong level of immunity.
“These tests would be very attractive if they’re cost effective, readily available and easy to do,” he said.
Tony Mazzulli, chief microbiologist with Toronto’s Sinai Health system, sounded a note of caution. It is uncertain whether antibodies would be sufficient protection if a person were to be re-exposed to the virus in very large amounts. That could happen in an emergency room or intensive-care unit, for instance.
The timing of a return to work and normal life also matters, he said. Some people who have antibodies to the virus could still be contagious, even if their symptoms have eased. Patients begin to make antibodies while they are still sick, Mazzulli said, and they continue to shed the virus for a few days after they have recovered.
It would be “a bit premature” to use the tests to make staffing decisions now, Mazzulli said. “The hope is … (antibodies) do confer protection and they can go to work, ride the subways, whatever they do. But there’s no guarantee.”
Meantime, at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, researchers are preparing to start a clinical trial in which patients who test positive for COVID-19 would have their blood collected at the time of diagnosis, and again 15 to 20 days after that in the patient’s home.
The trial is designed to show when people who have COVID-19 infections “seroconvert” – when antibodies produced by the body begin to show up in blood tests. That information will be useful in determining the best time to conduct the tests.
“You don’t want to do it too soon because of the risk of false negatives,” said Elitza Theel, director of Mayo’s Infectious Diseases Serology Laboratory.
Mayo also is evaluating the performance of antibody tests from several companies, including two from China.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it is working on its own version of antibody tests, but it has not given a timetable. The agency has said extensive research is underway. One challenge for the CDC and other labs is to get enough blood samples from people who have already been infected to verify the antibody results.
The agency faced heavy criticism for sending a faulty diagnostic test to state and local labs early in the coronavirus epidemic and then taking weeks to fix it. The federal government is still trying to expand diagnostic testing capacity.
MONTHS OF IMMUNITY
The potential for antibody testing arises as U.S. President Donald Trump is considering scaling back “social distancing” and stay-at-home advisories in the weeks ahead. His political allies argue that the toll on the U.S. economy is too severe. About half of Americans have been ordered to shelter in place as many schools and businesses remain shuttered indefinitely.
On Tuesday, Trump said: “I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter.”
Reopening offices and businesses without fear of triggering more infections, however, has been complicated by the lack of testing to diagnose COVID-19 cases across much of the country.
On Monday, Dr. Deborah Birx, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, said simple, finger-prick antibody tests could play an important role, and she suggested the federal government is not waiting on the CDC’s version.
“Some are developed now. We are looking at the ones in Singapore,” Birx said Monday at a White House press briefing. “We are very quality-oriented. We don’t want false positives.”
False positives are erroneous results that, in this case, could lead to a conclusion that someone has immunity when he or she does not.
Researchers at the Duke-National University of Singapore Medical School said they quickly developed one antibody test that had about 90% accuracy and later introduced a more sophisticated version that was more reliable, according to a report in the Straits Times of Singapore.
Infectious disease experts say immunity against COVID-19 may last for several months and perhaps a year or more based on their studies of other coronaviruses, including Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which emerged in 2003. But they caution that there is no way to know precisely how long immunity would last with COVID-19, and it may vary person to person.
“You are likely to have immunity for several months,” said Dr. Stanley Perlman, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Iowa. “We just don’t know. This is an incredibly important question.”
Perlman said many of the new antibody tests coming on the market now may be highly effective, but researchers want to see data to back that up.
“You want them to be sensitive enough to detect everyone who has had the infection,” Perlman said, “but not so nonspecific that you are picking up other coronaviruses.”
(This story has been refiled to fix Bioamerica Inc RIC)
(Chad Terhune reported from Los Angeles, Julie Steenhuysen from Chicago and Allison Martell from Toronto; Editing by Julie Marquis)
By Menna A. Farouk
CAIRO (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – As the spread of coronavirus grows so too has people’s stress levels and anxieties, prompting businesses for good around the world to turn to technology to help the most vulnerable cope with mental health issues.
In Egypt, online therapy social enterprise Shezlong has offered 150,000 free sessions to help people cope with anxiety or depression or those suffering from “pseudo coronavirus” where people are convinced they have COVID-19 although they do not.
Hard Feelings, a Canadian social enterprise that aims to make therapy more accessible by offering low-cost counselling sessions, has closed its Toronto store and its counsellors will be speaking to clients online.
In Britain, a group of qualified therapists have set up a volunteering scheme called the Help Hub, offering free 20-minute Skype, FaceTime or telephone calls to vulnerable people in need of mental health support.
Meanwhile in the United States, online therapy platform Talkspace, a company with more than one million users, is donating a free month of therapy to 1,000 healthcare workers fighting the coronavirus outbreak.
“With negative news coming from media outlets about coronavirus, people are getting more stressed and panicked and more and more people will need psychological support,” Shezlong founder Ahmed Abu ElHaz told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
About 1,500 free sessions have been given since the three-month initiative launched in March in Egypt, which has more than 400 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 20 deaths, according to data from the Johns Hopkins coronavirus resource center.
Conducted via video conference, the sessions offer coping techniques for dealing with bad news, in a country where 3% of the population – or 8.2 million – suffer from anxiety and mood disorders, according to 2018 Egyptian health ministry data.
“We use cognitive behavioural therapy which teaches patients how to manage stress and anxiety and gives relaxation techniques such as deep breathing and positive self-talk,” said Mohamed el-Shami, a therapist working for Shezlong.
Professor of Psychology at Cairo University Gamal Freusar said 70% of Egyptians were now classified as “pseudo coronavirus” as they assume they have the virus and think they have the symptoms although they actually do not.
“About two-thirds of Egyptian society is now having high levels of anxiety and tension and this may cause many physical problems for them,” he said.
U.S. online therapy platform Talkspace said it was donating free therapy to healthcare workers.
“The mental health of our social workers, nurses, doctors and other health personnel is now paramount,” Talkspace CEO Oren Frank said in a statement.
(Reporting by Menna A. Farouk in Cairo, Additional reporting by Sarah Shearman in London, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly. Visit http://news.trust.org)
LONDON (Reuters) – More than 170,000 people have signed up to help Britain’s National Health Service tackle the coronavirus outbreak just hours after a request for a quarter of a million volunteers.
“At times of crisis people come together,” Stephen Powis, the national medical director of NHS England, told BBC TV. “This is a health emergency and we can all play a role.”
Britain had called for 250,000 volunteers to deliver food and medicines, provide transport for patients and supplies, and to telephone those who are becoming lonely because of self isolation.
The system aims to reach up to 1.5 million people who are “shielding” – keeping themselves at home for 12 weeks under government advice to protect those with serious health conditions.
The death toll from coronavirus in the United Kingdom jumped on Tuesday by 87 to a total of 422 – the biggest daily increase since the crisis began.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Kate Holton)
By Liz Lee and Krishna N. Das
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Disposable rubber gloves are indispensable in the global fight against the new coronavirus, yet a month’s lockdown in stricken Malaysia where three of every five gloves are made has upended the supply chain and threatens to hamstring hospitals worldwide.
The world’s biggest maker of medical gloves by volume, Top Glove Corp Bhd, has the capacity to make 200 million gloves a day, but a supplier shutdown has left it with only two weeks’ worth of boxes to ship them in, its founder told Reuters.
“We can’t get our gloves to hospitals without cartons,” Executive Chairman Lim Wee Chai said in an interview. “Hospitals need our gloves. We can’t just supply 50% of their requirement.”
The virus, which emerged in China at the end of last year, has left Malaysia with the highest number of infections in Southeast Asia at nearly 1,800 cases, with 17 deaths. To halt transmission, the government has ordered people to stay home from March 18 to April 14.
Glove makers and others eligible for exemption can operate half-staffed provided they meet strict safety conditions. Still, the Malaysian Rubber Glove Manufacturers Association (MARGMA) said it was lobbying “almost every hour” to return the industry to full strength to minimize risk to the global fight.
“We’re shut down,” said Evonna Lim, managing director at packaging supplier Etheos Imprint Technology. “We fall under an exempted category but still need approval.”
Dr Celine Gounder, an infectious diseases specialist at the New York University School of Medicine, said she was using up to six times as many gloves as normal each day due to the number of patients with COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.
“If we get to the point where there is a shortage of gloves, that’s going to be a huge problem because then we cannot draw blood safely, we cannot do many medical procedures safely.”
GLOBAL CALL
With glove supplies dwindling, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on its website this month said some gloves could be used beyond their designated shelf life. On Tuesday, the United States lifted a ban on imports from Malaysian glove maker WRP Asia Pacific who it had previously accused of using forced labor.
Britain’s Department of Health & Social Care has urged Malaysian authorities to prioritize the production and shipment of gloves that are of “utmost criticality for fighting COVID-19,” showed a letter dated March 20 to glove maker Supermax Corp and shared with Reuters.
MARGMA is considering rationing due to the “extremely high demand,” its president Denis Low told Reuters. “You can produce as many gloves as you can but then there’s nothing to pack them into.”
Under normal circumstances, Top Glove can meet less than 40% of its own packaging needs. For the remainder, it said just 23% of suppliers have gained approval to operate at half strength.
“We are lobbying almost every hour, we are putting in a lot of letters to the ministry,” said Low. “We are lobbying hard for the chemical suppliers and we want to ensure that the printers are also being given approval and any other supporting services, even transportation.”
In a statement, MARGMA said that as they were having to rely on half of their staff to work overtime during the lockdown, costs would rise by up to 30% and that buyers had agreed to bear that.
Malaysia’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry on Tuesday said it had received masses of applications to operate through the lockdown, and that it was seeking cooperation from industries to give way to those producing essential goods.
AUTOMATION
Developed economies are home to only a fifth of the world’s population yet account for nearly 70% medical glove demand due to stringent medical standards. At 150, U.S. glove consumption per-capita is 20 times that of China, latest MARGMA data showed.
MARGMA expects demand to jump 16% to 345 billion gloves this year, with Malaysia’s market share rising two percentage points to 65%. Thailand usually follows at about 18% and China at 9%.
Top Glove said orders have doubled since February and it sees sales rising by a fifth in the next six months. Its stock, with a market value of about $3.5 billion, has risen by a third this year versus a fall of 16% in the wider market.
The company, with customers in 195 economies, registered the highest net money inflow last week among listed Malaysian firms, along with peer Hartalega Holdings Bhd, showed MIDF Research data. Other glove makers include Kossan Rubber Industries Bhd and Careplus Group Bhd.
“We are fortunate enough to be in essential goods,” said Lim. “These few months and at least the next six months will be an all-time high in terms of sales volume, revenue and profit.”
With more than 80% of its 44 factories worldwide automated, Top Glove itself is less impacted by the lockdown than its more labor-intensive domestic suppliers. Packaging woes aside, however, ramping up production could turn under-supply into over-supply when the coronavirus outbreak finally subsides.
“This outbreak will create awareness and make humankind healthier,” said Lim. “People will pay more attention, they will invest more, they will buy more so demand will be more.”
(Reporting by Liz Lee and Krishna N. Das; Additional reporting by Ebrahim Harris and Daveena Kaur; Editing by Christopher Cushing)
By Christopher Bing and Raphael Satter
(Reuters) – A U.S. cybersecurity firm said Wednesday it has detected a surge in new cyberspying by a suspected Chinese group dating back to late January, when coronavirus was starting to spread outside China.
FireEye Inc. said in a report it had spotted a spike in activity from a hacking group it dubs “APT41” that began on Jan. 20 and targeted more than 75 of its customers, from manufacturers and media companies to healthcare organizations and nonprofits.
There were “multiple possible explanations” for the spike in activity, said FireEye Security Architect Christopher Glyer, pointing to long-simmering tensions between Washington and Beijing over trade and more recent clashes over the coronavirus outbreak, which has killed more than 17,000 people since late last year.
The report said it was “one of the broadest campaigns by a Chinese cyber espionage actor we have observed in recent years.”
FireEye declined to identify the affected customers. The Chinese Foreign Ministry did not directly address FireEye’s allegations but said in a statement that China was “a victim of cybercrime and cyberattack.” The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined comment.
FireEye said in its report that APT41 abused recently disclosed flaws in software developed by Cisco, Citrix and others to try to break into scores of companies’ networks in the United States, Canada, Britain, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and more than a dozen other countries.
Cisco said in an email it had fixed the vulnerability and it was aware of attempts to exploit it, a sentiment echoed by Citrix, which said it had worked with FireEye to help identify “potential compromises.”
Others have also spotted a recent uptick in cyber-espionage activity linked to Beijing.
Matt Webster, a researcher with Secureworks – Dell Technologies’ cybersecurity arm – said in an email that his team had also seen evidence of increased activity from Chinese hacking groups “over the last few weeks.”
In particular, he said his team had recently spotted new digital infrastructure associated with APT41 – which Secureworks dubs “Bronze Atlas.”
Tying hacking campaigns to any specific country or entity is often fraught with uncertainty, but FireEye said it had assessed “with moderate confidence” that APT41 was composed of Chinese government contractors.
FireEye’s head of analysis, John Hultquist, said the surge was surprising because hacking activity attributed to China has generally become more focused.
“This broad action is a departure from that norm,” he said.
(Reporting by Raphael Satter and Christopher Bing; additional reporting by the Beijing newsroom; Editing by Richard Pullin and Paul Simao)
By Susan Heavey
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The burden caused by the fast-spreading coronavirus accelerated across the United States on Wednesday beyond the hot spots of New York, California and Washington state as Louisiana and others faced a severe crush on their healthcare systems.
U.S. President Donald Trump issued the latest major federal disaster declarations for Louisiana and Iowa late on Tuesday, freeing up federal funds to help states cope with the increasing number of cases of the dangerous respiratory disease caused by the virus that threaten to overwhelm state and local resources.
That brings to five the number of states receiving major disaster declarations from the Republican president. New York – the state with by far the most infections and deaths – was given such status last weekend as well as California and Washington state.
Louisiana, where large crowds recently celebrated Mardi Gras in New Orleans and other locations, has reported a spike in infections with 1,388 total confirmed cases and 46 deaths as of midday Tuesday, according to the Louisiana Department of Health.
“I have determined that this incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of state and local governments,” the state’s governor wrote the White House this week in seeking the declaration.
It was not immediately clear why Trump granted Iowa federal disaster relief and not some other states with many more cases. Iowa, where officials announced the state’s first death from the coronavirus on Tuesday, has reported 124 confirmed cases. (https://tmsnrt.rs/2w7hX9T)
A number of other U.S. states have also applied for major disaster relief status in recent days including Florida, Texas and New Jersey.
Nationwide, more than 53,000 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus that is particularly perilous to the elderly and people with pre-existing medical conditions, with at least 720 deaths. World Health Organization officials have said the United States could become the global epicenter of the pandemic, which first emerged late last year in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
The governors of at least 18 states have issued stay-at-home directives affecting about half the U.S. population of roughly 330 million people. The sweeping orders are aimed at slowing the spread of the pathogen but have upended daily life as schools and businesses shutter indefinitely.
Trump on Tuesday said he wanted to re-open the country by Easter Sunday, but later told reporters he would listen to recommendations from the nation’s top health officials.
The closures have rocked the U.S. economy with global markets rattled by the pandemic. Wall Street on Wednesday extended its gains from the previous session as lawmakers and the Trump administration reached a deal for a $2 trillion stimulus package to help businesses and millions of Americans hit by the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.
The measure in Congress would provide a massive infusion of aid, including $150 billion in state and local governments to fight the outbreak, and could be passed by the Senate later on Wednesday. The measure would still have to pass the House of Representatives before Trump could sign it into law.
The plan also includes loan programs for hard-hit industries and small businesses, direct payments of up to $3,000 to millions of U.S. families, expanded unemployment aid and billions of dollars for hospitals and health systems.
National Guard troops have been activated to assist with the virus fight, while two U.S. Navy hospital ships have been directed to head to Los Angeles and New York City to help relieve the strain on local hospitals. The U.S. military is preparing field hospitals in New York and Seattle.
NEW YORK UNDER SIEGE
With more than 8 million people densely packed in New York City, New York has become the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak as the number of COVID-19 cases threatens to overwhelm its healthcare system.
The White House on Tuesday advised anyone who has visited or left New York to isolate themselves as the number of cases in the state swelled to more than 25,600 confirmed infections and 210 deaths.
Officials from the state have pleaded for more equipment and hospital beds and lamented a lack of urgency by federal officials in recent weeks as the threat grew increasingly dire.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, and Trump have clashed in recent days over the federal government’s response. Cuomo has called for thousands of new ventilators and urged the president to utilize his federal powers to speed up manufacturing for critical health equipment.
Trump, in a Fox News interview on Tuesday, defended his response, adding: “It’s a two-way street. They have to treat us well also.”
On Wednesday, Trump fired back against the reported tensions, tweeting: “I am working very hard to help New York City & State. Dealing with both Mayor & Governor and producing tremendously for them, including four new medical centers and four new hospitals. Fake News that I won’t help them because I don’t like Cuomo (I do). Just sent 4000 ventilators!”
A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted from March 18-24 showed that 68% of U.S. adults agreed that the coronavirus was a serious existential threat, up 14 percentage points from a similar poll from a week earlier. This includes majorities of Democrats and Republicans, whites, minorities, young, old, urban, suburban and rural residents. The poll found that 33% now said they think it is very or somewhat likely they will be infected within the next year, up 5 percentage points from last week.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Will Dunham)
By Brad Heath and Veronica G. Cardenas
Laredo, Texas (Reuters) – Alberto Mendoza figures he can make it a couple of weeks on unemployment benefits before starting to decide which bills won’t get paid. The 26-year-old father of three lost his job training cooks when all the local restaurants started closing their doors and laying off staff.
“I have to pay rent, my truck bills; I have three children to support,” he said.
Mendoza is among thousands here in Laredo, Texas, along the southern U.S. border, who are teetering on the edge of financial ruin as the coronavirus pandemic takes hold – even though Laredo has seen no deaths and confirmed just nine cases by Tuesday evening. That’s a tiny figure compared to thousands of other hard-hit communities.
For an interactive graphic tracking coronavirus in the United States, click https://tmsnrt.rs/3bmK7N3
The plight of Laredo – a city of 260,000 located in one of America’s poorest counties – illustrates the breadth and depth of the economic pain radiating across the world as governments scramble to shut down commerce and issue stay-home directives to slow the pandemic. When city officials limited public gatherings – even funerals – to no more than 10 people, the local economy went off a cliff, despite the comparatively minor health impacts so far. The city’s rapid decline underscores the magnified fallout from the pandemic in economically fragile communities where most families live one or two missed paychecks away from desperation.
Poverty makes it much harder for people to isolate themselves to guard against infection or to seek proper care when they get sick, said Sandra Quinn, a professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health.
“A pandemic like this just feeds on social inequities and existing health system disparities,” she said.
In surrounding Webb County, which includes Laredo, nearly a third of residents live beneath the federal poverty line, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. About as many don’t have health insurance. Nearly all the students in the city’s school system — now shuttered — were eligible for subsidized lunches or other government benefits.
Mendoza’s kids have insurance through Medicaid, the government-run health program for low-income families. Mendoza has no insurance at all. If he gets sick, he said, he would “go to the doctor and ask for a payment plan.”
Other families are already in the food line. One day last week, more than 800 people showed up at the South Texas Regional Food Bank for boxes of pasta, rice and other supplies. On a typical day before the pandemic, just 25 or 30 people might have stopped by the organization’s warehouse to get food to sustain their families through a rough patch.
Now, instead of coming inside to ask for help, they sat at laptop computers under an awning outside, no more than 10 at a time, using video chat to talk with workers who didn’t want to run the risk of becoming infected.
“You have to feel for these people,” said Alma Boubel, the food bank’s director.
The severity of the U.S. economic crisis will soon become more clear with releases of new data. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard recently predicted the U.S. unemployment rate may hit 30% in the second quarter – higher than during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Goldman Sachs analysts estimated that more than 2 million people applied for unemployment benefits last week alone, more than triple the previous record.
The unemployment rate in Webb County, estimated at 4.1% in January, was above the national average before the virus hit. Many of the region’s jobs are tied to the transportation industry that moves goods back and forth across the border with Mexico – traffic that U.S. President Donald Trump and the Mexican government have sharply curtailed in an effort to contain the disease.
Officials in Laredo and Webb County did not respond to questions about how they planned to handle the public health or economic shocks.
The realities of lower-wage work also often mean that people can’t shift their livelihoods to a home office, as professionals in higher-end jobs often can. That dynamic also complicates government efforts to stop the spread of disease through social isolation.
“Social distancing is hard, and of course many low-income people work at jobs that are physical, in-person, manual, and you have to show up,” said Sara Rosenbaum, a professor at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health.
Studies after an outbreak of the H1N1 flu virus in the United States a decade ago found that minorities and lower-income families had a harder time separating themselves from other people in the way health authorities recommend. “They were less likely to be able to avoid public transportation, lived in larger households,” and had jobs that couldn’t be done remotely, Quinn said.
Ricarda Rios, 65, worked as a substitute teacher in Laredo before the schools closed. The system’s employees are still on the payroll, but not the subs. He said he is already “completely out of resources.”
That’s made it harder to steer clear of other people, especially when stores run short of basic supplies. “I have to go to different places until I get lucky and buy a dozen of eggs or a gallon of milk,” he said.
Carmen Garcia, the executive director of the Laredo Regional Food Bank, said she grasped the enormity of the crisis when she exhausted the supplies she bought for all of March just ten days into the month. Many of the people who come to her for help live in large families and work low-wage jobs that are now threatened. Many regularly seek cheaper medical care on the opposite side of the border with Mexico, which has been closed to non-essential travel.
“There’s a lot of worry now,” Garcia said. “Our clients, what they’re saying is they don’t know where else they can get assistance. They’re willing to risk their health. They can’t work right now, so they don’t have a paycheck. They need whatever food they can get.”
(Reporting by Brad Heath and Veronica G. Cardenas; Additional reporting by Ned Parker; Editing by Brian Thevenot)
By David Morgan and Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. senators will vote on Wednesday on a $2 trillion bipartisan package of legislation to alleviate the devastating economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, hoping it will become law quickly.
Top aides to Republican President Donald Trump and senior Senate Republicans and Democrats said they had agreed on the unprecedented stimulus bill in the early hours of Wednesday, after five days of marathon talks.
“We’re going to pass this legislation later today,” Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said after the deal was announced early on Wednesday.
The Senate was due to convene at 12 p.m. EDT (1600 GMT), though timing of the vote was unclear. Trump supports the measure, the White House said.
“We’re really looking forward to this vote today so that he can sign it into law,” White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said on Fox News.
The massive bill is expected to include a $500 billion fund to help hard-hit industries and a comparable amount for direct payments of up to $3,000 apiece to millions of U.S. families.
It will also include $350 billion for small-business loans, $250 billion for expanded unemployment aid and at least $100 billion for hospitals and related health systems.
It would be the largest rescue package ever approved by Congress and the third such effort to be passed this month.
“We have greatly strengthened the bill and we’re proud of what we’ve done,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said on CNN. He said he thought the chamber would pass the legislation on Wednesday.
The package aims to flood the U.S. economy with cash in a bid to stem the impact of a pandemic that has killed more than 730 people in the United States and infected more than 53,470, shuttered thousands of businesses, thrown millions out of work and led states to order 100 million people – nearly a third of the population – to stay at home.
Wall Street on Wednesday extended its massive bounce from the previous session after Congress reached the deal on the package. All three major U.S. stock indexes were up in early trading.
The bill is expected to pass the Republican-led Senate easily, more so because Republican Senator Rand Paul, the only senator to vote against an earlier round of emergency virus funding, may be unable to vote after testing positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
It also must pass the Democratic-led House of Representatives. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who proposed a more far-reaching rescue package, did not say whether she would support the Senate version.
“House Democrats will now review the final provisions and legislative text of the agreement to determine a course of action,” she said in a statement.
House members left Washington 10 days ago, but the lower chamber could quickly pass the bill without requiring them to return if all members agree to do so. If just one of the chamber’s 430 members objects, that could lead to delays.
It also must be signed by Trump, who said on Tuesday he wanted Americans to end “social distancing” restrictions intended to slow the spread of the virus and return to work by Easter, April 12.
That concerned health officials, who fear ending the lockdown too soon could bring more virus-related deaths.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu and Patricia Zengerle; Writing by Andy Sullivan and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Jonathan Oatis)
