As states lock down, more than one in five Americans will soon be under orders to mostly stay indoors.
A surge in new infections coincided with an increase in testing capacity in New York State. New York City hospitals will run out of crucial supplies in the coming weeks without new shipments, including three million specialized N95 masks.
About half of those infected in New York City are under 50.
As of Wednesday evening, more than 500 coronavirus patients were hospitalized in New York City, 169 of them in intensive care units, according to city officials,
The city’s data aligned with recent information from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which on Wednesday said that nearly 40 percent of people hospitalized with the virus were 20 to 54.
Fifty-eight percent of those who tested positive in the city were men, and 42 percent were women, according to data from the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
Among the essential industries that are exempt from the rule are food, health care and pharmacies, banks, warehousing and shipping, and media.
California governor orders state’s residents to stay home.
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California on Thursday ordered Californians — all 40 million of them — to stay at home as much as possible in the coming weeks as the state confronts the escalating coronavirus outbreak. The order represents the most drastic measure any governor has taken to control the virus, and a decision that Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, which has far more cases than in California, has resisted taking.
Republicans put their imprint on planned $1 trillion economic stabilization package.
The White House and lawmakers scrambled on Thursday to flesh out details of a $1 trillion economic stabilization plan to help workers and businesses weather a potentially deep recession, negotiating over the size and scope of direct payments to millions of people and aid for companies facing devastation in the coronavirus pandemic.
Senate Republicans, racing to put their imprint on the crisis response, unveiled a package that would provide hundreds of billions of dollars in loans to big corporations and small businesses, large corporate tax cuts and checks of up to $1,200 for taxpayers. The plan would also place limits on a paid-leave program enacted this week to respond to the crisis.
But the 247-page measure, the product of a feverish round of negotiations among Republicans, was all but certain to face opposition from Democrats who have pressed for more generous paid-leave benefits and targeting help to workers and families rather than large corporations.
The details emerged as Washington grappled with the dimensions of an extraordinary government rescue effort that is likely to last for many months. At the White House, President Trump said he would be open to having the government take equity stakes in companies that require federal help, a move that would be unpopular with shareholders and would give the government more oversight over businesses.
“The federal government’s not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping,” Trump said. “You know, we’re not a shipping clerk.”
The Delivery Workers Who Risk Their Health to Bring You FoodDemand for home delivery is rising, and New Yorkers barricaded in their homes are leaning more and more on a largely immigrant work force.
The virus is hitting Europe worse than China.
The epidemic is now bigger in Europe, where governments aren’t used to giving harsh orders, and citizens aren’t used to following them.
Trump administration’s plea to states: Keep mum about unemployment stats.
The macabre milestones keep coming. By Wednesday, Europe had recorded more coronavirus cases and fatalities than China. On Thursday, Italy — by itself — passed China in reported deaths.
The Trump administration is asking state labor officials to delay releasing the precise number of unemployment claims they are fielding, an indication of how uneasy policymakers are about further roiling a stock market already plunging in response to the coronavirus outbreak.
Trump has privately expressed irritation at the dire predictions of some of his advisers, most notably when Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told lawmakers that unemployment could reach 20 percent this year.
The federal numbers released Thursday morning were already alarming: 281,000 people nationwide applied for unemployment insurance last week, up from 211,000 the previous week. They were apparently only a grim preview of what is to come.