U.S. suffers record deaths, and small businesses struggle to secure loans.
The United States counted its highest coronavirus-related death toll in a single day on Tuesday, with 1,997 fatalities, bringing the total to nearly 13,000 on Wednesday morning, according to the latest figures in a New York Times database. The U.S. currently has at least 397,754 positive cases across every state, Washington, D.C. and four territories.
New York State continues to be the center of the outbreak, recording 805 deaths on Tuesday alone, according to The Times’s data. The state, with a population of nearly 20 million, now has more confirmed cases of coronavirus than Italy, a nation of 60 million that was the first in Europe to be ravaged by the disease.
And in New York City, where the total number of recorded fatalities surged to 4,009, the virus has claimed more lives than the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The total number of deaths does not account for the number of people who have died in their homes.
“The blunt truth is coronavirus is driving these very tragic deaths,” Mayor Bill de Blasio, speaking on CNN on Wednesday morning, said, referring to people dying at home. “We are talking about 100 to 200 people per day.”
The rising toll reflects the often considerable lag between the time people are infected and the day they die, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has said. He has also warned that the slowing rate of infections could quickly be reversed if people stopped following social distancing protocols.
Like Italy within Europe, New York has had the misfortune of being the first place in the United States where the virus deeply seeded itself in the population. But a New York Times investigation also found that early missteps, including delays in closing schools and failing to break the chain of transmission within households, have proved costly.
President Trump, who initially played down the threat posed by the epidemic, has warned that Americans faced a week of death and sorrow. And it surely will not be the last, as the virus spreads rapidly in other parts of the country and many states have still not felt the pathogen’s full wrath.
At the same time, economists are also warning of a long healing period for the economy after the health crisis subsides.
Small businesses, which are unlikely to have cash buffers to survive the economic shutdown, have been especially hard hit. Yet the federal agency responsible for disbursing $349 billion in emergency relief has not been able to cope with the explosive demand for funds.
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said late Tuesday that the state had secured nearly 200 million masks a month for health care workers, an extraordinary number amid a global shortage of masks.
He also expressed optimism that lockdowns were “bending the curve” and slowing the spread of the virus, buying time for the state’s health care system as it works to treat patients.
“Let me give you a sense of optimism in terms of the curve in California bending: It is bending, but it’s also stretching,” Mr. Newsom said at a news conference.
The rate of people going to the hospital and needing intensive care had eased, he said.
“These are not the double-digit increases we were seeing in hospitalization rates or I.C.U. rates that we saw even a week or so ago,” he said, though he cautioned: “That’s not to suggest by any stretch of the imagination that we’ll continue to see these declines. It’s to only reinforce the importance of maintaining physical distancing and continuing our stay-at-home policy.”
In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti stepped up precautions, ordering all residents to wear masks when visiting essential businesses starting Friday.
“Cover up, save a life — it’s that simple,” Mr. Garcetti said.
A spokesman for Mr. Newsom said the state would buy millions of new masks from overseas manufacturers in two separate deals with a California nonprofit and a California company. The spokesman did not disclose the names of the nonprofit of the company, or the price.
Demand for masks has far outstripped supply in recent weeks, driving some prices 10 times higher than before the pandemic. Mr. Newsom said the state had previously bought smaller numbers on a case-by-case basis but decided to pool its resources for bigger deals.
Democratic leaders said on Wednesday that they would push to double the size of a $250 billion emergency measure requested by the Trump administration this week for loans to distressed businesses, adding money for hospitals, states and food aid and insisting that half the loan money be channeled through community banks to help farmers, women, people of color and veterans.
The request could slow what the White House and Republican congressional leaders said they hoped would be quick passage by week’s end of an interim relief package to supplement the $2 trillion stimulus law enacted last month.
In a joint statement, Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, said they supported the administration’s request for an additional $250 billion for the small business loan program, but said that $125 billion of those funds should be directed to underserved businesses that might otherwise have trouble securing loans.
And they said they would push to add $100 billion for hospitals, community health centers and health systems — in part to shore up testing and the distribution of critical safety gear for health workers on the front lines — as well as $150 billion for state and local governments and a 15 percent increase in food assistance benefits.
In the statement, Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer referred to the legislation as “interim emergency legislation” and said Congress should move after passing it to consider another economic relief package to “provide transformational relief as the American people weather this assault on their lives and livelihoods.”
Republicans had hoped to begin approving the quick infusion of funds as early as Thursday during a procedural session in the Senate without the entire chamber present.
General Motors will send 30,000 ventilators to the federal stockpile.
After weeks of drama that included President Trump’s unproven accusation that General Motors was trying to “rip off” the United States, the Department of Health and Human Services announced on Wednesday that the carmaker would provide 30,000 ventilators to the nation’s stockpile for $489 million by the end of August.
The first batch — 6,132 of the machines — will be delivered by June 1, after most of the peak demand is expected to have passed from the first wave of coronavirus cases at hospitals. But even that initial number amounts to roughly two-thirds of what is now believed to be left in the stockpile after thousands of ventilators were sent to New York and other hard-hit cities.
In an early-morning statement, the secretary of health and human services, Alex M. Azar II, said the contract would be among the first during the crisis issued under the Defense Production Act, a Korean War-era law that essentially allows the United States to assure that it is the first customer in line — and that it can control the price it is being charged.
“By rating contracts under the D.P.A., H.H.S. is helping manufacturers like G.M. get the supplies they need to produce ventilators as quickly as possible, while also ensuring that these ventilators are routed through the Strategic National Stockpile to where they’re needed most,” Mr. Azar said in a statement, clearly trying to patch up the president’s dispute with the company.
The formal contract comes two weeks after the White House pulled back from announcing what was intended to be a $1 billion contract for upwards of 80,000 ventilators. Mr. Trump had accused the company of “wasting time,” and he also attacked Mary T. Barra, the company’s chief executive, with whom he had clashed last year over the closure of a G.M. facility.
But Mr. Trump was essentially ordering the company to do what it had already announced it was doing, even in the absence of a contract. The Defense Production Act may help it secure supplies, and it makes clear that the ventilators will be routed through the federal government, at a moment that states are bidding against each other to secure ventilators and other equipment in short supply.
Black Americans are facing alarming rates of infection in some states.
The virus is infecting and killing black people in the United States at disproportionately high rates, according to data released by several states and big cities, highlighting what public health researchers say are entrenched inequalities in resources, health and access to care.
The statistics are preliminary and much remains unknown because most cities and states are not reporting race as they provide numbers of confirmed cases and fatalities. Initial indications from a number of places, though, are alarming enough that policymakers say they must act immediately to stem potential devastation in black communities.
“This is a call-to-action moment for all of us,” said Lori Lightfoot, the mayor of Chicago, who announced statistics of the outbreak in her city this week. African-Americans account for more than half of those who have tested positive and 72 percent of virus-related fatalities in Chicago, even though they make up a little less than a third of the population.
On Tuesday, President Trump acknowledged the growing signs of disparity, and said that federal authorities were working to provide statistics over the next two or three days that might help examine the issue.
Stocks on Wall Street are higher as investors weigh latest economic data.
Stocks in the U.S. posted modest gains on Wednesday, as investors weighed data showing the extent of the economic damage wrought by the coronavirus pandemic against signs of progress in the effort to contain it.
The S&P 500 rose about 1 percent, while major indexes in Europe were slightly lower.
U.S. stocks had ended slightly lower on Tuesday after a rally throughout the day. Through Tuesday, the S&P 500 was up nearly 19 percent from its March 23 low. It’s still more than 21 percent below its high, reached on Feb. 19.
Investors had in recent days found solace in signs that the outbreak was peaking in some of the hardest-hit parts of the United States and Europe. On Wednesday, China lifted its lockdown on the city of Wuhan, where the virus emerged, in another sign of progress.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain is stable and “responding to treatment” for the coronavirus, but remains in intensive care, a spokesman said on Wednesday.
Mr. Johnson was admitted to St. Thomas’ Hospital in London on Sunday and transferred the next day to the intensive care unit, where he received oxygen but was not put on a ventilator. He is not suffering from pneumonia, his aides said on Tuesday, but his illness has brought concerns about the government’s ability to make major decisions in the midst of the outbreak.
Downing Street declined on Wednesday to comment on what treatment Mr. Johnson was receiving or to say who was treating him, though it repeated previous statements that he is breathing without assistance apart from receiving oxygen.
The office also noted that he was in good spirits but made clear that Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, initially asked to stand in for Mr. Johnson “where necessary,” was now doing so full time. The prime minister is able to contact those he needs to speak to, but is not working. Mr. Johnson is still the head of the government, but the seriousness of his illness means that could change quickly.
Mr. Raab is already serving as chairman of a key committee on the pandemic as the government works to control the spread of the virus and stabilize an economy hit hard by the lockdown measures it has imposed. The government prepares to next week review measures that have closed down much of the economy, though there are no signs as yet of an imminent easing.
Time is of the essence for disinfecting your home and hands.
You’ve been cleaning your home and washing your hands all these years, and probably never stopped to consider whether you were doing it effectively. But time matters when it comes to fully disinfecting your household surfaces and your skin.
In the case of some disinfectants, it can take up to 10 minutes for them to fully work. As for your hands? Scrubbing for a full 20 seconds is the way to go.
Last month, Dr. Bertha Mayorquin, a New Jersey physician, told her soon-to-be ex-husband that there was a change in plans. After two weeks of providing treatment by video as a precaution against the coronavirus, she would resume seeing patients in person.
But when she left work on a Friday to pick up her two daughters for the weekend, her husband presented her with a court order granting him sole temporary custody of the girls. His lawyer had convinced a judge that Dr. Mayorquin could expose the children, 11 and 8, to Covid-19.
The doctor, an internist, had intended to spend the weekend celebrating her younger daughter’s birthday. Instead, she spent it assembling 50 pages of paperwork to try to reverse the order.
“Many people working in the hospitals — doctors, nurses, so many of us — are parents,” said Dr. Mayorquin, whose hospital had asked her to starting treat non-coronavirus patients at an urgent care center to ease the burden of the pandemic. “Are our children going to be taken away from us because we are on the front lines helping people?”
That question is arising across the United States as a growing number of parents have begun withholding access to their children from former spouses or partners over fears of infection, according to families, lawyers and judges.
For health care and other essential workers, some say they shouldn’t be punished for doing crucial services. Their counterparts say that the jobs pose too great a risk to other family members.
John Prine, the raspy-voiced country-folk singer whose ingenious lyrics to songs by turns poignant, angry and comic made him a favorite of Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson and others, died on Tuesday in Nashville, Tenn. He was 73.
The cause was complications from Covid-19, his family said.
Mr. Prine was a relative unknown in 1970 when Mr. Kristofferson heard him play one night at a small Chicago club called the Fifth Peg, dragged there by the singer-songwriter Steve Goodman. Mr. Kristofferson was performing in Chicago at the time at the Quiet Knight.
At the Fifth Peg, Mr. Prine treated him to a brief after-hours performance of material that, Mr. Kristofferson later wrote, “was unlike anything I’d heard before.”
His debut album, called simply “John Prine” and released in 1971, included songs that became his signatures. Some gained wider fame after being recorded by other artists.
The federal stimulus bills enacted in March, including a $2 trillion economic relief plan, offer help for the millions of American small businesses affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
Cash grants. Low-interest loans. Payments to offset some payroll costs for businesses that keep or rehire workers. There are also enhancements to unemployment insurance and paid leave.
With security workers sheltering at home, police forces stretched thin and cavernous exhibition halls left empty, museums are working to figure out how to contend with the possibility of enhanced security risks.
“The risk is serious,” said Steve Keller, a museum security consultant who has worked with the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian Institution and others. “Thieves might think the museums are in a weakened condition, and that increases the threat.”
Last week burglars broke into a small museum in the Netherlands that had closed because of the coronavirus and absconded with an early van Gogh painting. Police officers responding to the museum’s alarm found a shattered glass door and a bare spot on the wall where the painting had been.
Museums have not discussed their security measures or concerns, except to say that standard safeguards are in place.
For the duration of the pandemic, Mr. Keller said, museums should operate in permanent “night mode,” relying on security measures that are generally in place when institutions close for the evening.
Reporting was contributed by Jack Nicas, Stacy Cowley, Colin Moynihan, J. David Goodman, David E. Sanger, Emily Cochrane, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Megan Twohey, Marc Santora, Dan Levin, Matt Stevens, Charlie Savage, Peter Baker, William Grimes, Lisa Friedman, Julia Echikson, Patricia Mazzei, John Eligon, Audra D. S. Burch, Dionne Searcey and Richard A. Oppel Jr.