There was an increase of 3.3m initial unemployment claims from last week. This marks the highest level of initial claims ever recorded. Millions working in retail, restaurants, and travel lose jobs.
More than 6.65 million people filed for unemployment benefits in the US last week, the latest official figures to highlight the devastating economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the American economy.
The federal labor department announced that a new record number of people sought benefits after losing their jobs in the week ending 27 March as long lines formed at unemployment offices, phone lines jammed and websites collapsed under the weight of claims across the US.
The US now faces the sharpest rise in unemployment in its history, a surge that is already highlighting income inequality across the nation and comes as the global economy goes into a nosedive that is likely to exacerbate the situation in the months ahead.
With large parts of the US now on lockdown, millions of people working in retail, restaurants, travel, hotels and leisure industries have lost their jobs and the losses are spreading. Oil and gas companies are laying off workers as oil prices collapse and engineering firms including General Electric are cutting staff as the airline industry grinds to a halt.
It has been over two weeks since Brandy Banaay was let go from her housekeeping job at the Doubletree Hotel Alana in Waikiki, Hawaii, yet the single mother of three has yet to successfully file for unemployment insurance. Whenever she tries to file on Hawaii’s website, it crashes.
Some 3.3 million had filed for unemployment the previous week, bringing total claims to 9.95 million for the two weeks. More people have filed for unemployment in the last two weeks than filed in the last 10 months.
N.Y.C. officials said residents should cover their faces outside.
New York City officials on Thursday advised residents to shield their faces with a scarf, bandanna or other protective covering when leaving their homes, although they reiterated that people should continue to stay at home as much as possible during the coronavirus outbreak.
Mr. de Blasio urged city residents not to use the surgical or N-95 masks that are desperately needed by emergency services workers, doctors, nurses and other hospital staff employees who are treating infected patients.
“You can create your own version,” Mr. de Blasio said. “You can be creative and put whatever decoration you want on it. It can be as homemade as you want. But that’s what we want you to do: something homemade.”
The mayor and the city’s health commissioner, Dr. Oxiris Barbot, repeatedly said that the city and state’s social distancing guidelines continued to apply.
More than 1 million people have been infected and at least 51,000 have died in more than 170 countries.
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 1 million people, according to official counts, almost a quarter of them in the United States. As of Thursday afternoon, at least 51,000 people have died, and the virus has been detected in at least 171 countries, as these maps show. There is evidence on six continents of sustained transmission of the virus.
There are still a dozen states where governors have resisted issuing stay-at-home orders. An analysis of cellphone location data by The New York Times found that people in the Southeast and other places that were slow enact such orders have continued to travel widely, potentially exposing more people as the outbreak accelerates.
States face a shortage of lifesaving medications
For weeks, health care providers have sounded the alarm on a shortage of ventilators and protective gear, but now medicines are in short supply as well.
As the numbers of the infected and dead continue to soar, hospitals are reporting that some critical medicines are beginning to run low — including drugs that are used to keep patients’ airways open, antibiotics, antivirals and sedatives.
New York State, the center of America’s outbreak with 2,468 coronavirus deaths, estimates its stockpile of critically needed ventilators will be depleted by the end of next week, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said. And President Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to require 3M Company, a major manufacturer of face masks, to turn over stocks of much-needed respirator masks to the federal government.
Among American businesses seeking financial breathing room is the president’s family company, the Trump Organization, which has been exploring whether it can delay some of its financial obligations, according to a New York Times investigation.
New York’s Bronx Zoo is closed, but staff members still care for roughly 6,000 animals.
Still, the life of the zoo goes on, as the sea lions perform their routines, no doubt encouraged by the fish they swallow in a single gulp.
“The animals are blissfully unaware of what the rest of us have been going through,” said Jim Breheny, the director of the Bronx Zoo. “What I wouldn’t give for that innocence.”
Unlike Broadway theaters or museums, zoos cannot go dark. Chinchillas need checkups. Penguin chicks might require help after they hatch. Captive tigers, alligators and grizzly bears probably shouldn’t be left to their own devices.
“The animals that we care for rely on us for everything,” said Mr. Breheny, whose first job at age 14 was staffing the zoo’s camel rides.
So since it closed to the public on March 16, the Bronx Zoo has been tending to animals while keeping its human employees as socially distant as possible. Roughly 300 workers of its 700-plus staff were deemed “essential” to care for animals and maintain the zoo’s operations. They are split in half into two teams, which report on alternating weeks.
The 1,000-Bed Comfort Was Supposed to Aid New York. It Has 20 Patients.
Such were the expectations for the Navy hospital ship U.S.N.S. Comfort that when it chugged into New York Harbor this week, throngs of people, momentarily forgetting the strictures of social distancing, crammed together along Manhattan’s west side to catch a glimpse.
On Thursday, though, the huge white vessel, which officials had promised would bring succor to a city on the brink, sat mostly empty, infuriating executives at local hospitals. The ship’s 1,000 beds are largely unused, its 1,200-member crew mostly idle.
Only 20 patients had been transferred to the ship, officials said, even as New York hospitals struggled to find space for the thousands infected with the coronavirus. Another Navy hospital ship, the U.S.N.S. Mercy, docked in Los Angeles, has had a total of 15 patients, officials said.
“If I’m blunt about it, it’s a joke,” said Michael Dowling, the head of Northwell Health, New York’s largest hospital system. “Everyone can say, ‘Thank you for putting up these wonderful places and opening up these cavernous halls.’ But we’re in a crisis here, we’re in a battlefield.”
The Comfort was sent to New York to relieve pressure on city hospitals by treating people with ailments other than Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus.
President Trump left a nine-day sequester in the White House last week to travel to Norfolk, Va., to personally see off the ship as it set sail for New York, saying it would play a “critical role.” The ship’s arrival on Monday was cheered as one of the few bright moments in a grim time for the city.
But the reality has been different. A tangle of military protocols and bureaucratic hurdles has prevented the Comfort from accepting many patients at all.