New Jersey, Connecticut and Illinois were preparing to issue restrictions like California and New York, and the U.S. was set to close its borders with Mexico and Canada.
Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan on Friday. New York’s governor has sharply limited outdoor activity across the state, including by ordering nonessential businesses to keep all of their workers home.
Soon more than 1 in 5 Americans will be under orders to stay mostly indoors.
One by one, localities and now some of the nation’s biggest states are beginning to limit people’s movements as they struggle to try to curb the spread of the coronavirus before fast-growing caseloads overwhelm their hospitals.
In New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo moved Friday to sharply limit outdoor activity across the state, including by ordering nonessential businesses to keep all of their workers home. His wide-ranging executive order, which takes effect on Sunday at 8 p.m., was issued as the number of known cases in the state jumped to over 7,800.
“These provisions will be enforced,” Mr. Cuomo said at a briefing in Albany. “These are not helpful hints.”
Then, within the space of an hour Friday afternoon, several other big states followed suit. Gov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut issued an order similar to Mr. Cuomo’s, and Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey said he planned to order on Saturday that all nonessential businesses in that state shut down as well.
And in Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced a statewide “stay at home” order on Friday, asking all 12 million residents to leave the house only when necessary. All nonessential businesses must also stop operating under the order, which is effective at 5 p.m. Saturday.
“I don’t come to this decision easily,” Mr. Pritzker said at an afternoon news conference. “I fully recognize that, in some cases, I am choosing between people’s lives and saving people’s livelihood. But ultimately, you can’t have a livelihood if you don’t have your life.”
Their moves were announced as California woke up Friday to new rules closing the state’s nonessential retail shops and sharply limiting outdoor movement, after Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered Californians — all 40 million of them — to stay in their houses as much as possible. There was initially confusion there over how the order would be enforced and interpreted, but Californians were told they could still take walks and leave their neighborhoods to hike or go to the beach, as long as they were able to practice social distancing.
Mayor LaToya Cantrell of New Orleans also issued a stay-at-home order on Friday, asking the city’s 390,000 residents to go out for “critical needs only.”
States and localities announced the new rules as the death toll in the United States surpassed 200, and as Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., recorded their first deaths. There have now been deaths in more than half the states, with the most in Washington State, New York and California.
New York will allow healthy people under age 70 to go out for groceries and medicines, and to exercise and walk outside, as long as they stay six feet away from others. Mass transit will continue to run so that health care workers and other people with essential jobs can get to work, but people will be urged not to use it unless absolutely necessary. Nonessential gatherings of any size will be banned.
And certain essential businesses will be allowed to remain open, including: grocers, health care providers, pharmacies, gas stations, convenience stores, banks, hardware stores, laundromats, child-care providers, auto repair, utilities, warehouses and distributors, plumbers and other skilled contractors, animal-care providers, transportation providers, construction companies and many kinds of manufacturers.
Senators came close to reaching a deal on a $1 trillion rescue plan.
Senator Mitch McConnell, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Senator Chuck Schumer in Washington
Senators plan to work through the weekend hashing out a bipartisan deal on a sweeping $1 trillion economic stabilization package to respond to the coronavirus pandemic that could be enacted within days.
Soon more than 1 in 5 Americans will be under orders to stay mostly indoors.
One by one, localities and now some of the nation’s biggest states are beginning to limit people’s movements as they struggle to try to curb the spread of the coronavirus before fast-growing caseloads overwhelm their hospitals.
In New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo moved Friday to sharply limit outdoor activity across the state, including by ordering nonessential businesses to keep all of their workers home. His wide-ranging executive order, which takes effect on Sunday at 8 p.m., was issued as the number of known cases in the state jumped to over 7,800.
“These provisions will be enforced,” Mr. Cuomo said at a briefing in Albany. “These are not helpful hints.”
Then, within the space of an hour Friday afternoon, several other big states followed suit. Gov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut issued an order similar to Mr. Cuomo’s, and Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey said he planned to order on Saturday that all nonessential businesses in that state shut down as well.
And in Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced a statewide “stay at home” order on Friday, asking all 12 million residents to leave the house only when necessary. All nonessential businesses must also stop operating under the order, which is effective at 5 p.m. Saturday.
“I don’t come to this decision easily,” Mr. Pritzker said at an afternoon news conference. “I fully recognize that, in some cases, I am choosing between people’s lives and saving people’s livelihood. But ultimately, you can’t have a livelihood if you don’t have your life.”
Their moves were announced as California woke up Friday to new rules closing the state’s nonessential retail shops and sharply limiting outdoor movement, after Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered Californians — all 40 million of them — to stay in their houses as much as possible. There was initially confusion there over how the order would be enforced and interpreted, but Californians were told they could still take walks and leave their neighborhoods to hike or go to the beach, as long as they were able to practice social distancing.
Mayor LaToya Cantrell of New Orleans also issued a stay-at-home order on Friday, asking the city’s 390,000 residents to go out for “critical needs only.”
States and localities announced the new rules as the death toll in the United States surpassed 200, and as Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., recorded their first deaths. There have now been deaths in more than half the states, with the most in Washington State, New York and California.
New York will allow healthy people under age 70 to go out for groceries and medicines, and to exercise and walk outside, as long as they stay six feet away from others. Mass transit will continue to run so that health care workers and other people with essential jobs can get to work, but people will be urged not to use it unless absolutely necessary. Nonessential gatherings of any size will be banned.
And certain essential businesses will be allowed to remain open, including: grocers, health care providers, pharmacies, gas stations, convenience stores, banks, hardware stores, laundromats, child-care providers, auto repair, utilities, warehouses and distributors, plumbers and other skilled contractors, animal-care providers, transportation providers, construction companies and many kinds of manufacturers.
Senators came close to reaching a deal on a $1 trillion rescue plan.
Senator Mitch McConnell, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Senator Chuck Schumer in Washington
Senators plan to work through the weekend hashing out a bipartisan deal on a sweeping $1 trillion economic stabilization package to respond to the coronavirus pandemic that could be enacted within days.
Democratic and Republican negotiators, who huddled with top administration officials throughout the day and into the evening Friday, said they had made significant progress on a number of issues. But ultimately they fell short of the ambitious goal set by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, who had pushed to strike a deal in principle by midnight on Friday.
Mr. McConnell has begun clearing procedural hurdles on the Senate floor in order to vote on the Senate package on Monday, leaving senators and President Trump’s top economic advisers until Saturday afternoon to craft legislative text, said Eric Ueland, the White House director of legislative affairs.
Senators will reconvene Saturday morning to continue talks, negotiators said. Mr. Ueland said that there was “a lot of near consensus” on how to provide aid to industries seeking relief from the impact of the pandemic, assistance to small businesses, boost health care facilities and send direct aid to the American people.
One of Vice President Mike Pence’s staff members has tested positive.
A Trump administration official working in Vice President Mike Pence’s office has tested positive for the coronavirus, though that person did not come into close contact with Mr. Pence or President Trump, according to a spokeswoman.
Mr. Pence’s spokeswoman, Katie Miller, did not immediately reply to a request for more details about the official’s role, or when the person’s last day at work was.
Several Trump administration officials have self-quarantined over concerns of exposure to the virus. This week, Mick Mulvaney, the outgoing acting White House chief of staff, entered self-quarantine in his home state of South Carolina after his niece, with whom he shares an apartment in Washington, fell ill and was awaiting test results.
Stephanie Grisham, the White House press secretary, said this week she was working from home after coming into contact with a member of the Brazil delegation that also tested positive.
Last week, Ivanka Trump, the president’s eldest daughter and adviser, had stayed home “out of an abundance of caution” after an Australian official she recently met with tested positive for the coronavirus, a White House spokesman said. By Friday, Ms. Trump had returned to work, watching from the sideline as her father sparred with reporters in the briefing room.
A person familiar with the situation said she had tested negative for the virus.
Businesses and investors struggled with another day of market turmoil.
Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Friday.
Wall Street ended its worst week since the 2008 financial crisis with the Dow below where it stood on the day before President Trump was inaugurated. The S&P 500, which fell more than 4 percent, is not far from that mark as well. The president has trumpeted the so-called Trump bump throughout his presidency as evidence of his success.
In its latest effort to prop up the markets, the Federal Reserve moved to keep mutual funds from crashing as investors cash out by offering banks an incentive to buy local debt from money markets.
Starbucks will close its cafes in the United States in response to the coronavirus crisis, though it will remain open for delivery and drive-through customers, and said it would close all its stores in Britain.
Hedge fund managers are already looking to make money from the crisis. Some hedge funds are looking to invest in beaten-down companies poised for a rebound. And the hedge fund billionaire Kenneth C. Griffin is starting up a new fund at Citadel to take advantage of the volatility and price discrepancies caused by the selling pressure in the bond market.
The more than two million Americans reporting to work each day to sell food and other household staples amid the coronavirus pandemic are a new class of emergency worker. The cashiers and stockroom employees at your local grocery are a source of calm, signifying that, even as demand has surged, supply chains remain intact and the essentials that people need remain available. But these same employees are growing tired and, because they constantly interact with customers, fearful of getting sick themselves.
The top two executives at United Airlines asked employees to contact members of Congress and urge them to bail out the aviation industry, noting that deep cuts would have to be made if government assistance does not materialize by month’s end. And Delta disclosed that the company expected second-quarter revenue to fall 80 percent compared with the same period last year.
One reprieve: Americans now have until July 15 to file tax returns, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Friday.
The White House announces border closures and warns against immigration.
President Trump at the White House on Friday.
At a White House briefing on Friday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that border closures to nonessential travelers from Canada and Mexico would go into effect at midnight on Saturday.
Mr. Pompeo also reiterated that the State Department had issued a Level 4 travel advisory warning Americans against traveling abroad. He said U.S. citizens “should arrange immediate return” unless they intend to remain abroad for an extended time. “If you choose to travel, it may well be fairly disruptive,” he said.
President Trump suggested that immigration would strain health care systems.
“During a global pandemic they threaten to create a public storm that would spread the infection to our border agents, migrants and the public at large,” Mr. Trump said, referring to people seeking to enter the country.
Speaking on a day when the worldwide death toll stood at more than 10,000, including more than 200 in the United States, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that there was a “fundamental public health reason” for closing the northern and southern borders. “Understand that: There’s a public health reason for doing that.”
Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Pompeo used the term “Chinese virus,” continuing their efforts to rename a virus that causes a disease public health experts purposely named Covid-19 to avoid the spread of blame and xenophobia.
The term has angered Chinese officials and a wide range of critics, and China experts say labeling the virus that way will only ratchet up tensions between the two countries, while resulting in the kind of xenophobia that American leaders should discourage. Asian-Americans have reported incidents of racial slurs and physical abuse because of the erroneous perception that China is the cause of the virus.
“It’s not racist at all,” Mr. Trump said on Wednesday, explaining his rationale. “It comes from China, that’s why.”
On Thursday, a Washington Post photographer took an image of Mr. Trump’s speech materials on the White House podium that showed the word “coronavirus” crossed out and “Chinese” replaced in Sharpie.
Close up of President @realDonaldTrump notes is seen where he crossed out "Corona" and replaced it with "Chinese" Virus as he speaks with his coronavirus task force today at the White House. #trump #trumpnotes
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American passengers from cruise near France describe chaotic evacuation.
The Costa Luminosa, moored at Marseille harbour on March 20.
A charter flight carrying more than 230 Americans and more than 75 Canadians who had been evacuated from the Costa Luminosa cruise ship in France idled on the tarmac in Atlanta for about five hours on Friday because health officials learned that three of the evacuees had tested positive for the coronavirus.
According to two people who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the episode, the test results became known during the flight, triggering the hourslong delay that frustrated, angered and frightened those on the plane.
“Everyone is up in arms,” Kelea Edgar Nevis, 47, said in a text message from the stuck plane. “We’re going to have a mutiny.”
The return trip itself had been a harrowing all-night odyssey, with busloads of the passengers stuck for hours in Marseille before boarding the flight to Atlanta. Left without food for more than 24 hours, they started fainting on the plane. Several had severe coughs.
Jennifer Catron, an evacuee who described herself as a wedding photographer with some medical experience, described a chaotic, dramatic flight with perhaps two dozen medical issues, some emergencies, some relatively minor.
“This plane is a medical disaster,” Ms. Catron said in an email during the flight.
The French media reported that more than 600 passengers disembarked on Thursday, of whom 75 were tested and 36 found positive for the virus, none of them French. The French passengers were bused home, and the handful of Spanish passengers were taken to a flight for Barcelona, the report said, while many American and Canadian passengers were taken to the Atlanta-bound flight. Italian passengers remained on the ship for a final leg of the voyage to their country.
Scores of the evacuees on the flight to Atlanta also booked onward flights to their home cities, despite having been near sick people all night and on the cruise since at least March 5.
Haiti announces a state of emergency after confirmed cases.
A man wearing a protective mask in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Friday.
Haiti announced a state of emergency on Thursday after two patients were confirmed to have the coronavirus.
Both patients were being treated in the University Hospital of Mirebalais, in the country’s central plateau. Both had been out of the country recently.
In a televised news conference on Thursday evening, President Jovenel Moïse announced the closure of schools and universities, that meetings of more than 10 people were forbidden and a nightly curfew for the Caribbean’s most densely populated country.
If extreme precautions are not taken, the virus could quickly overwhelm the country, warned Elizabeth Campa, senior health and policy adviser for Zanmi Lasante, the Haitian nonprofit organization that runs the Mirebalais hospital in partnership with the government.
The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti has only 124 intensive care unit beds for a population of about 11 million, and the capability to mechanically ventilate fewer than 70 patients, according to a recent survey of hospitals done by the Research and Education consortium for the Acute Care in Haiti study group.
But given that 75 percent of the population live in deep poverty, on less than $2.50 a day and without access to electricity or clean water, it is hard to imagine how many could survive the containment measures being carried out in places like France and Italy.
With critical supplies running low, Trump resists pressure to use a wartime law.
A temporary 200-bed field hospital is being built on a soccer field in Shoreline, Wash., in preparation for a growth in coronavirus patients in the King County area.
Mr. Trump signaled Friday that the federal government was mobilizing industry to provide urgently needed resources to help halt the spread of the virus, but he did not specify what steps he had taken after days of conflicting messages about his intentions.
On Friday, he said without evidence that he was using the Defense Production Act to help acquire “millions of masks.”
“The states are having a hard time getting them,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference at the White House. “We are using the act for things like this.”
If Mr. Trump’s pledge comes to pass, after weeks of promises that failed to materialize, the supplies could relieve the strain on state and local governments. But at times, the president seemed to suggest that private industry was already stepping up, without being compelled by the government.
“We are literally being besieged in a beautiful way by companies that want to do the work and help our country,” Mr. Trump said. “We have not had a problem with that at all.”
The White House did not immediately respond to inquiries asking for examples of companies or industries that have been compelled under the law to spur production, as Mr. Trump claimed.
Some of the president’s advisers have privately said they share conservatives’ longstanding opposition of government intervention and oppose using the law, and the president again suggested his own ambivalence toward using it.
At the same time, the president has faced increasing pressure from government officials and the health care industry to find a way to speed up new supplies.
Before Mr. Trump’s appearance on Friday, New York City’s mayor warned that the city was within weeks of running out of crucial supplies, with doctors and nurses confronting dwindling stocks of protective gear and hospitals facing shortages of lifesaving ventilators.
And medical leaders in Washington State, which has the highest number of coronavirus deaths in the country, have begun preparing a bleak triage strategy to determine which patients may have to be denied complete medical care in the event that the health system becomes overwhelmed in the coming weeks.
There have now been deaths in more than half the states, with the most in Washington State, New York and California.
The nation’s blood supply faces a dire shortage.
A mobile blood drive outside of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on Thursday.
The American Red Cross normally supplies about 40 percent of the nation’s blood, but more than 4,500 of its blood drives had been canceled, resulting in nearly 150,000 fewer donations.
Typically, the Red Cross needs to receive 13,000 blood donations daily, so it has already lost around 11 days of stock. Red blood cells are viable for 42 days, platelets for only five, so new donations are essential.
“It’s an unprecedented situation,” said Dr. Pampee Young, chief medical officer of biomedical services at the Red Cross. “We are already actively triaging units, determining which hospitals can and can’t get blood.”
While donor blood is not being used to treat coronavirus patients, transfusions are still needed for cases such as trauma, organ transplants or complications of childbirth.
“The worst case scenario could be a bleeding young patient who was in a car accident, and there’s no blood,” said Dr. Young. “We’re not quite there yet, but that is the ultimate fear.”
The death toll mounts in Italy, and Britain closes its pubs.
An empty restaurant in London on Thursday. Prime Minister Boris Johnson asked all restaurants to close.
Italy reported 627 new coronavirus deaths on Friday, its highest number in a single day, bringing its death toll above 4,000. Spain became the second European nation to register more than 1,000 deaths, and officials there warned that the country’s health care system could soon be overwhelmed.
French officials continued to tighten restrictions on movements ahead of the expected peak of the epidemic there. In Germany, authorities in the southern state of Bavaria issued an order asking people to stay indoors in most cases — the most far-reaching measure in the country, which had been appealing to people’s sense of public duty and reason to keep them at home.
And Britain, which had resisted the kind of wide scale closures that many other nations adopted days ago, reluctantly agreed to shutter one of the symbols of the nation: the pub. Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the country’s cafes, pubs and restaurants to close Friday night, along with nightclubs, theaters, gyms, movie theaters and sports and leisure facilities.
The measures will apply throughout the United Kingdom, after agreements were reached with the authorities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
“We have a real threat to our country and to the ability of our National Health Service to manage it,” said Mr. Johnson, who added that he would keep the transportation network open.
His announcement came as the chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, said that the government would help pay a big part of the wages of those unable to work. Up to 80 percent of the pay of those workers could be covered, said Mr. Sunak, who added that welfare provision would increase.
The fast spread of the virus means that many nations are facing simultaneous shortages of desperately needed medical equipment — from protective garb to beds to ambulances — as their health care systems buckle under ever higher caseloads.
“The health situation in Madrid is critical,” said Ángela Hernández, the deputy secretary general of Amyts, an association of doctors in Madrid. “We’re no longer in a phase of health alert, but instead of alarm.”
In the Catalonia region, hospital patients are being housed in hotels. Some hospitals in the Basque region have now dedicated most floors to coronavirus cases.
And in France, there is a growing outcry over the scarcity of face masks. Jérôme Salomon, a top official at France’s health ministry, said that 35 million had already been distributed and promised that authorities were ramping up production and distribution.
Health officials in Germany, which has 28,000 intensive care beds, are attempting to increase capacity by setting up temporary hospitals in empty rehabilitation clinics, hotels and trade fair halls.
After the onset of spring filled Bavaria’s parks and beer gardens with people sitting closely together, the state issued new rules prohibiting people from leaving home except for reasons including grocery shopping, caring for a relative or taking a walk — and only alone or with family members.
“Everyone can and everyone must do their part in this crisis,” the Bavarian governor, Markus Söder, in Munich on Friday. “People are going to die. Corona is not just a flu, it is a new virus.”
You can still help others in the time of social distancing.
Reaching out to provide assistance or charity in this trying time can ease your own anxiety too. Consider supporting local businesses, safely donating blood or reaching out in more creative ways.
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