At least 17 states reported tallies of at least 1,000 infections. Illinois reported the first known U. S. death of an infant with the virus.
This briefing has ended. Read live updates on the coronavirus pandemic here. President Trump said Saturday night that he will not impose a quarantine on New York, New Jersey and Connecticut but would instead issue a “strong” travel advisory to be implemented by the governors of the three states. Mr.
Trump made the announcement on Twitter just hours after telling reporters that he was considering a quarantine of the three states in an effort to limit the spread of the coronavirus to Florida and other states. Later Saturday night, the C. D. C.
issued a formal advisory urging the residents of the three states to “refrain from non-essential domestic travel for 14 days effective immediately. ” The advisory, which was posted to the agency’s website and its Twitter account, does not apply to “employees of critical infrastructure industries,” the agency said. That includes trucking, public health professionals, financial services and food supply workers. Mr.
Trump, when he said he was considering a quarantine for the region, offered no details about how his administration would enforce it. Speaking to CNN, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York criticized the idea, calling it “a declaration of war on states. ” He also questioned the logistical challenges, as well as the message, such an order would present.
“If you start walling off areas all across the country it would just be totally bizarre, counterproductive, anti-American, antisocial,” he said. Mr. Trump’s public airing of his deliberations came one day after he signed a $2 trillion economic stimulus package and as cases in the tristate area continued to climb. Cases have also been growing elsewhere across the country, with at least 17 states reporting tallies of at least 1,000 infections and the surgeon general, Jerome Adams, signaling that Chicago, Detroit and New Orleans were emerging as hot spots.
President Trump told of “hard days that lie ahead” as his top scientific advisers released models predicting that the U.S. death toll would be 100,000 to 240,00...
Maryland on Saturday announced an outbreak at a Mount Airy nursing home where 66 residents tested positive and 11 have been hospitalized. The national total stands above 119,000, and Mr. Trump has been under substantial pressure from state officials to do more to quell the crisis. The specter of a federal quarantine followed a wave of governors who, fearful about the virus spreading further through their states, ordered people who had traveled from New York to isolate themselves for two weeks after their arrivals.
Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island said Friday that state troopers would begin stopping drivers with New York license plates so that National Guard officials could collect contact information and inform anyone coming from the state that they were subject to a mandatory, 14-day quarantine. Texas, Florida, Maryland and South Carolina are among the other states that have ordered people arriving from New York to self-quarantine. In Texas, for instance, the authorities said Friday that Department of Public Safety agents would make surprise visits to see whether travelers were adhering to the state’s mandate, and they warned that violators could be fined $1,000 and jailed for 180 days.
Mr. Lamont, the Connecticut governor, this week urged all travelers from New York City to self-quarantine for two weeks upon entering the state, but he stopped short of issuing an order requiring it. A detailed county map shows the extent of the coronavirus outbreak, with tables of the number of cases by state and county. The agency leading the nation’s coronavirus response said seven employees had tested positive for the virus, with another four cases pending, though in a letter to its employees’ union, it declined a request to say where they were located, prompting criticism from the union that the agency was jeopardizing public health.
Union leaders last week had asked the agency, Federal Emergency Management Agency, how many employees had tested positive, and in which offices, so that workers who might have interacted with those people could decide whether to get tested as well. On Friday, FEMA turned down the request, saying the union did not need to know, according to a copy of the agency’s letter that was reviewed by The New York Times. In response to inquiries from The Times, the agency on Saturday said that seven employees had tested positive for the coronavirus. “Currently, FEMA has 11 total cases — seven employees have tested positive and four potential cases are pending,” Lizzie Litzow, a spokeswoman for FEMA, said in a statement.
“Individuals who need to be aware of their names and locations have been made aware. ” Steve Reaves, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 4060, which represents about 5,000 FEMA employees, said that by not sharing details about the staff infections with the union, the agency was endangering other employees as well as the safety of the people to whom the agency was currently providing aid. Over all, the agency has about 14,000 employees. “If we’re out there handing out masks and gloves, and we’ve got Covid, then they’re contaminated,” said Mr.
Reaves, referring to the disease caused by the coronavirus. The concern over the safety of FEMA employees comes as the agency is already stretched thin by three years of major natural disasters, and as it has been forced to rapidly rethink its recommendations for emergency relief shelters, which often accommodate many survivors in close quarters, risking transmission of disease. New York will postpone its April 28 presidential primary until June 23, Gov. Andrew M.
Cuomo announced on Saturday, buying time for the state to administer an election as it struggles to respond to the growing coronavirus outbreak. More than a dozen other states have rescheduled their primary elections as the campaign calendar has been upended by the outbreak, citing guidance from health officials who have urged people to avoid gathering spots, including polling places. Some of those states have switched to voting entirely by mail and have extended deadlines for doing so. And New York City officials are expected to decide this weekend whether to impose $500 fines on residents flouting social-distancing rules during the coronavirus outbreak by gathering in large groups at parks and ignoring police orders to disperse.
The vast majority of New Yorkers have been respecting the rules, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Friday, but officials had observed some violations. Mr. de Blasio also said that a few houses of worship were continuing to hold religious services and that they risked fines or having their buildings permanently closed if the police found congregations in them this weekend. The mayor also said he was working with state officials to freeze rents this year for 2.
3 million tenants in rent-stabilized apartments. On Saturday night, New York City officials reported a sharp jump in deaths from Friday night, saying that 222 people had died in that 24-hour window, bringing the total to 672 people. An inmate at a federal prison in Louisiana has died from the novel coronavirus, according to the Bureau of Prisons. The death represents the first involving an inmate in the federal prison system.
The inmate, Patrick Jones, was a 49-year-old man with long-term pre-existing medical conditions, according to the bureau. Corey Trammel, one of the presidents of the local prison union at the Federal Correctional Complex in Oakdale, La. , said that more than 10 inmates from the prison have been hospitalized and more than 60 inmates are in isolation with symptoms or are in quarantine. He said at least six staff members at the prison are thought to have the virus.
The Bureau of Prisons website currently lists five inmates and no staff members at the Oakdale prison as having tested positive for the virus. The bureau did not immediately explain the discrepancy in the numbers. In the federal system, at least 27 inmates and prison workers across the country have tested positive for the virus, according to the bureau’s website. More than a dozen Bureau of Prisons employees have told The New York Times that the federal prison system is not prepared for a coronavirus outbreak.
“We can’t get ahead of this,” Mr. Trammel said. “We need to do something to get ahead of this. And the community is being left in the dark.
” An infant who tested positive for the coronavirus has died in Chicago, the authorities said on Saturday. It was the first known death of a child younger than a year old with the virus in the United States, although the authorities in some states do not release details about people who die. “There has never before been a death associated with Covid-19 in an infant,” Dr. Ngozi Ezike, the director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, said of cases in the United States.
“A full investigation is underway to determine the cause of death. ” The Cook County Department of Public Health will release information on Tuesday or Wednesday on the cause and manner of death, according to a department spokeswoman. Newborns and babies have so far seemed largely unaffected by the coronavirus, but three new studies suggest that the virus could reach the fetus in utero. Even in these studies, the newborns seemed only mildly affected, if at all — which is reassuring, experts said.
And the studies are small and inconclusive on whether the virus actually breaches the placenta, which usually blocks harmful viruses and bacteria from reaching the fetus. Older adults, especially those in their 80s and 90s, have been viewed as the most vulnerable in the outbreak, but younger people have also died. The novel coronavirus claimed the life of at least one other infant, a 10-month-old in Wuhan, according to correspondence sent to The New England Journal of Medicine by a group of doctors in China. The infant suffered from intestinal blockage, experienced multiple organ failures and died four weeks after being admitted to the Wuhan Children’s Hospital.
[Analysis: North Korea claims to have no coronavirus cases. Can it be trusted? ] On Saturday, deaths in the United States exceeded 2,000, with at least 50 in Illinois. More than 3,500 known cases of the virus have been identified in the state.
The U. S. Department of Health and Human Services’s civil rights office told medical providers on Saturday that they may not deny medical care to people on the basis of their disabilities or age during the coronavirus emergency. The directive, released in a bulletin, came days after disability rights advocates filed complaints arguing that protocols to ration lifesaving medical care — adopted by Alabama and Washington State — were discriminatory.
“Our civil rights laws protect the equal dignity of every human life from ruthless utilitarianism,” Roger Severino, the office’s director, said in a statement. “Persons with disabilities, with limited English skills, and older persons should not be put at the end of the line for health care during emergencies,” the statement continued. Alabama’s plan instructs hospitals not to offer mechanical ventilators to people with certain health conditions.
“People with “severe or profound mental retardation,” “moderate to severe dementia” and “severe traumatic brain injury” should be considered “unlikely candidates for ventilator support” during a period of rationing, the protocol says.”
Washington’s guidance recommends that triage teams consider transferring hospital patients with “loss of reserves in energy, physical ability, cognition and general health” to outpatient or palliative care. Italy and Spain, which have the world’s highest coronavirus death tolls, have reported grim new daily totals: 889 deaths over 24 hours in Italy, and 832 in Spain. The swelling figures brought the fatality counts in the two countries to about 15,000 — more than half of the deaths reported worldwide. “We have to reduce to the maximum this mortality,” Fernando Simón, the director of Spain’s national health emergency center, said.
But the health system in Spain, where the government on Saturday further tightened restrictions on movement, is under strain. Dr. Simón warned that some intensive care units had reached “the limit,” while others were approaching their capacities. In the Madrid region, a hub of Spain’s outbreak, about 1,400 patients are now in intensive care units.
The surge in deaths was particularly unsettling in Italy, where it had seemed the fatality rate had begun to slow. More encouragingly to public health experts, Italy and Spain have both reported signs that new infections are becoming fewer, although those rates could wobble as the outbreaks progress. “We are reaching the peak of this curve that worries us so much,” Dr. Simón said.
“In some areas of the country we have probably already passed it,” he added. No country has been hit harder by the coronavirus than Italy, and no province has suffered as many losses as Bergamo. Photos and voices from there evoke a portrait of despair. Hopes have been more muted in Italy, where the head of the national health institute, Silvio Brusaferro, suggested the country’s outbreak “could peak in the next few days.
” Even so, he said, “We can’t delude ourselves that a slowing down of the diffusion will allow us to slow down social distancing. ” The scale of the outbreak in Italy has unnerved people in France, where President Emmanuel Macron offered a fresh defense of a government response that some have deemed insufficient. “We have absolutely not ignored these signs,” Mr. Macron said in an interview with three Italian newspapers.
“I dealt with this crisis with seriousness from the beginning, when it started in China. ” France has reported 37,575 cases and 2,314 deaths, a one-day increase of 319. “It’s an unprecedented health crisis in at least a century,” the French prime minister, Edouard Philippe, said on Saturday afternoon. “As I speak, almost half of humanity is under lockdown, it’s literally extraordinary.
” Here is how some other countries are responding to the virus: Russia will close its borders starting on March 30, a government order published on Saturday said. The measure will come into force at all vehicle, rail and pedestrian checkpoints, and apply to Russia’s maritime borders, the government said. It will not apply to Russian diplomats and the drivers of freight trucks, among others. The country, which has already grounded all international flights, has reported 1,264 coronavirus cases.
It closed its longest border, with China, in January. Turkey halted all intercity trains and limited domestic flights and halted international flights on Saturday. Its number of coronavirus cases jumped by a third in a day to 5,698, with 92 dead. Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, continues to cast doubt on São Paulo’s death toll from the outbreak, accusing the state governor, without evidence, of manipulating the numbers for political ends.
“I’m sorry, some people will die, they will die, that’s life,” Mr. Bolsonaro said in a television interview Friday night. He said that in São Paulo State, Brazil’s economic powerhouse — which has the most cases and deaths so far of coronavirus in Brazil, at 1,223 cases and 68 death — the death toll seemed “too large. ” The virus has infected more than 868,100 people in at least 171 countries.
The coronavirus prompted Denmark and Norway to close borders, shut down restaurants and ski slopes and keep students at their homes. Sweden has stayed open for business. The most populous Scandinavian country closed its high schools and colleges but kept its preschools, grade schools, pubs, restaurants and borders open. The country’s approach has raised questions about whether it’s gambling with a disease, Covid-19, that has no cure or vaccine, or if its tactic will be seen as a savvy strategy to fight a scourge that has laid waste to millions of jobs and prompted global lockdowns.
By Saturday, Norway, population 5. 3 million, had more than 3,770 coronavirus cases and 19 deaths; Denmark, population 5. 6 million, reported 2,200 cases and 52 deaths; Sweden, with 10. 12 million people, recorded more than 3,060 cases and 105 deaths.
The Swedish government is not denying the perils of the virus — politicians and health officials have stressed hand washing, social distancing and limiting contact with older adults — but is instead relying on the public’s self-restraint and sense of responsibility. “That’s the way we work in Sweden,” the state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, said. “Our whole system for communicable disease control is based on voluntary action. The immunization system is completely voluntary and there is 98 percent coverage.
” Just across the Oresund Bridge, another Scandinavian country is pursuing a strategy to limit the economic fallout that stands in contrast with steps taken by some other nations, including the United States, which on Friday approved a $2. 2 trillion stimulus package. In Denmark, political parties from across the ideological spectrum joined with labor unions and employers associations this month to unite behind a plan that has the government covering 75 to 90 percent of all worker salaries over the next three months, provided that companies refrain from layoffs. The government also agreed to cover costs like rent for companies that suffer a shortfall in revenues.
These two elements are collectively estimated to cost 42. 6 billion Danish kroner (about $6. 27 billion), after factoring in the savings on the unemployment insurance system. The Netherlands produced a similar plan, with the government stepping in to cover 90 percent of wages for firms that show losses of at least 20 percent of their revenue.
The British government pledged to cover 80 percent of wages, and on Thursday extended those protections to the self-employed. The aim of this approach is to prevent the wrenching experience of mass unemployment, while allowing businesses to retain their people rather than firing and then hiring them again. Once normalcy returned, companies would be in position to quickly resume operations, restoring economic growth. To stay resilient in frightening times, it’s critical to remember that gleams of hope do exist.
“Whenever I’ve asked people what thing they’re most proud of in their lives, it’s always connected to times of pain or strife or struggle and how they got through it,” said Jeremy Ortman, a mental health counselor in New York. So what bright spots are there to keep in mind during this pandemic? Kindness is in the news. Maybe people are being better to each other, or maybe we’re just noticing it more.
People are serenading each other across windowsills. Animal shelters are reporting upticks in foster applications. Volunteers are buying groceries for their neighbors. Research is moving at breakneck speed.
Doctors are scrambling to improve testing and find anti-viral treatments. The mobilization in the medical field recalls organizing efforts during World War II, said Robert Citino, executive director of the Institute for the Study of War and Democracy at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. “I don’t think there has ever been more human ingenuity devoted to a single scientific problem than the one we’re facing right now,” he said. We could be learning crucial lessons.
Years from now, if a deadlier virus emerges, we may find that today’s innovations and procedures have prepared us for it. “What we’re facing is unprecedented, and I don’t want to downplay its seriousness, but it’s not the worst-case scenario,” said Malia Jones, a researcher who studies infectious diseases at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. “I hope the takeaway here is that we’ll be better prepared to deal with the next pandemic,” Dr. Jones said.
“This is a good practice run for a novel influenza pandemic. That’s the real scary scenario. ” As the coronavirus pandemic rages on, experts have started to question official guidance about whether ordinary, healthy people should protect themselves with a regular surgical mask, or even a scarf. The recent surge in infections in the United States means that more Americans are now at risk of getting sick.
And healthy individuals, especially those with essential jobs who cannot avoid public transportation or close interaction with others, may need to start wearing masks more regularly, some doctors say. However, with even front-line medical workers complaining of shortages, few people are likely to be able to find them. The World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continue to state that masks don’t necessarily protect healthy individuals from getting infected as they go about their daily lives. The official guidance continues to recommend that masks be reserved for people who are already sick, as well as for the health workers and caregivers who interact with infected individuals on a regular basis.
Everyone else, they say, should stick to frequent hand-washing and maintaining a distance of at least six feet from other people to protect themselves. While wearing a mask may not prevent healthy people from getting sick, and doesn’t replace important measures such as hand-washing or social distancing, it may be better than nothing, said Dr. Robert Atmar, an infectious disease specialist at Baylor College of Medicine. Studies of influenza pandemics have shown that when high-grade N95 masks are not available, surgical masks protect people a bit more than not wearing masks at all.
“If everyone in the community wears a mask, it could decrease transmission,” Dr. Neil Fishman, the chief medical officer of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, said. “But unfortunately I think that we don’t have enough masks to make that effective policy in the U. S.
” Reporting was contributed by Danielle Ivory, Mariel Padilla, Neil MacFarquhar, Alan Blinder, Michael D. Shear, Jesse McKinley, Monica Davey, Annie Karni, Sheri Fink, Christopher Flavelle, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Peter S. Goodman, Christina Anderson, Henrik Pryser Libell, Motoko Rich, Ben Dooley, Elian Peltier, Abdi Latif Dahir, Elaine Yu, Daniel Victor, Peter Robins, David Moll, Constant Méheut, Elisabetta Povoledo, David E. Sanger, Maggie Haberman, Raphael Minder, Jason Horowitz, Knvul Sheikh, Noam Scheiber, Nelson D.
Schwartz, Tiffany Hsu, Sabrina Tavernise, Audra D. S. Burch, Sarah Mervosh, Campbell Robertson, Linda Qiu, Damien Cave and Maria Cramer.
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