Northeastern governors ally to plan for lifting virus restrictions, and Western states also announce they will work together to plan for the future.
With the number of new deaths and rate of hospitalizations falling in New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Monday that “the worst is over” in the coronavirus pandemic, and he announced an alliance with six other Northeastern governors to explore how to eventually lift restrictions — a move that appeared to be an implicit rebuke to President Trump.
The governors from New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Massachusetts and Rhode Island said they would begin to draw up a plan for when to reopen businesses and schools, and how quickly to allow people to return to work safely, although the timeline for such a plan remained unclear.
“If you do it wrong, it can backfire, and we’ve seen that with other places in the globe,” Mr. Cuomo said. “What the art form is going to be here is doing that smartly and doing that in a coordinated way.”
India extends nationwide lockdown, ordering more than 1 billion people to remain at home.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India extended a nationwide lockdown on Tuesday for nearly three more weeks, preventing more than 1 billion from leaving their homes.
He lauded the country for acting aggressively against the coronavirus and urged Indians not to “let our guard down.”
In an address to the nation, Mr. Modi said extending the existing 21-day lockdown until May 3 was necessary to prevent a spike in cases and that tougher restrictions could follow. He applauded Indians for following the measures “like a dedicated soldier.”
“If you look at it only economically, it has been expensive,” Mr. Modi said of the lockdown. “But you can’t put a price on the lives of Indians.”
Mr. Modi said some relaxations to the lockdown could be implemented after April 20 in certain areas if they showed strict observance of the rules. But for now he urged all 1.3 billion Indians to wear masks, stay inside, respect health care workers and help older people.
India has a relatively low number of confirmed infections, with about 10,000 cases, 339 deaths and a doubling rate of about six days. But a rapid spread could be devastating. Health care facilities are poor, and hundreds of millions of Indians live in dense urban areas, making it difficult to follow social distancing.
Thousands of migrant workers were initially trapped in big cities, far from their home villages. Some embarked on hundred-mile journeys by foot to reach their homes.
“If we have patience, we will defeat the coronavirus,” he said.
Cuomo: ‘The worst is over’ if New Yorkers remain resolute.
“I believe the worst is over if we continue to be smart,” Mr. Cuomo said at his daily briefing. “I believe we can start on the path to normalcy.”
But the governor wavered on the pronouncement several times. Asked a follow-up question at the briefing about whether he was confident the worst was indeed over, Mr. Cuomo said he was not. He repeated that the state was experiencing plateaus in key categories, but that if New Yorkers did not continue to follow the current restrictions, the situation would worsen.
He said the number of deaths, while “basically flat,” was “basically flat at a horrific level of pain and grief and sorrow.”
Still, despite there being more than 5,000 virus-related deaths in the state in the past week and nearly 19,000 people still in hospitals, Mr. Cuomo noted that most of the main measures of the outbreak’s severity were either leveling off or decreasing:
The state’s one-day toll of 671 deaths, while still “horrific,” Mr. Cuomo said, was the lowest it had been in a week. The total has been below last week’s peak, 799, for the past four days.
The number of intubated patients — most of whom, he said, would never recover — had dropped in two of the past three days.
The number of newly hospitalized patients, 1,958, was the lowest it had been in two weeks.
The three-day average increase in the number of hospitalized patients dropped to 85, the smallest increase to date.
The number of people who tested positive for the virus on Sunday, 6,337, was the lowest it has been in almost three weeks. The state has 195,031 confirmed virus cases, 106,673 of them in New York City.
Mr. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio have emphasized for the past several days that any return to a semblance of normal life in the city and state will proceed in phases, during which restrictions will be eased based on measurable progress against the virus.
The governor on Monday said that even if he were correct that the worst had passed, it could easily take 12 to 18 months for the state’s economy to return to normal.
Over 20 N.Y.C. public schoolteachers have died of the virus.
The virus has caused the deaths of at least 50 Education Department employees, including 21 teachers, in New York City, officials said on Monday.
The dead include Sandra Santos-Vizcaino, 54, a third-grade teacher at Public School 9 in the Prospect Heights section of Brooklyn, who died March 31, and Dez-Ann Romain, the principal at Brooklyn Democracy Academy in the Brownsville section. She died on March 23 at 36.
Among the other Education Department employees who have died, 22 were paraprofessionals who provided support for children with disabilities, and two were school administrators. The dead also included a guidance counselor, a member of the food staff, and two employees at the department’s central office.
Virus-related hospital admissions dropped in N.Y.C., the mayor said.
The number of virus patients admitted to hospitals in New York City dropped 17 percent from Saturday to Sunday, Mr. de Blasio said early Monday.
The mayor said that 383 people had been admitted on Sunday, down from 463 the day before.
In other encouraging news, Mr. de Blasio said that the number of people in intensive-care units in the city’s public hospitals had also declined, although only slightly, to 835 from 857.
The developments came as the mayor unveiled a new public effort to track the three measures he has said must move downward consistently and in unison for New York City to lift the restrictions that have shut down the city.
The measure are: the number of people suspected of having the virus who are admitted to hospitals; the number of people suspected of having the virus who are admitted to intensive care units; and the percentage of people who test positive for the virus.
“I’m pleased to report we do see all the important indicators moving in the right direction,” the mayor said. But as he has for several days, he emphasized that any change in the city’s restrictions was also contingent on more widespread testing than was currently available.
Other highlights from the mayor’s morning briefing included:
The suspension of alternate-side parking rules has been extended to April 28.
He called on the Rent Guidelines Board to enact a rent freeze.
He urged the state to let tenants who have lost income because of the virus defer the payment of rent and repay over a 12-month period.
People who see violations of social-distancing rules will soon be able to report them by sending a photograph, along with location information, to 311.
Liberal challenger defeats conservative incumbent in Wisconsin Supreme Court race
A liberal challenger defeated the conservative incumbent for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, a key race at the heart of Democratic accusations that Republicans risked voters’ health and safety by going forward with last week’s elections amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Jill Karofsky beat Daniel Kelly, whom then-Gov. Scott Walker (R) appointed to the state’s high court in 2016. Trump endorsed Kelly and on Election Day urged Wisconsin voters “to get out and vote NOW” for the justice.
With 90 percent of returns counted, Karofsky led Kelly by more than 100,000 votes, about seven percentage points.
Heavy mail-in balloting may have upended assumptions about relative advantage; according to statistics issued Monday by the state Elections Commission, nearly 1.1 million Wisconsinites cast ballots that way, nearly as many as total turnout in last year’s Supreme Court race — and more than the total turnout in the court races in each of the previous two years.
GOP maneuvering could ultimately prove to be a miscalculation, especially if a spike in coronavirus infections becomes apparent in the coming days that can be attributed to in-person voting last week.
Republicans entered the election with a 5-2 majority on the state Supreme Court, meaning that a Democratic victory still leaves liberals in the minority until 2023, the next time a conservative justice will face voters.
But an ongoing legal battle over a voter roll purge raised the stakes of this year’s election, with implications for November. Kelly recused himself, and conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn sided with voting rights groups to halt the purge. That left the court deadlocked 3-3 and gave Democrats a shot at stopping the purge, one of their top priorities ahead of the 2020 election.
Trump’s propaganda-laden, off-the-rails coronavirus briefing
Near the start of his daily coronavirus briefing on Monday, President Trump made a statement that betrayed, better than just about anything, how he views the purpose of such briefings.
Before playing a campaign-style video intended to show his decisive action on the virus and to accuse his critics of being the actual culprits on downplaying the threat, Trump cued it up by talking about what he wanted to do after it played.
“Most importantly,” he said, “we’re going to get back on to the reason we’re here, which is the success we’re having.”
Trump’s self-promotion, falsehoods and use of dodgy medical advice in these coronavirus briefings have led to a dialogue about whether networks should carry them live. And on Monday, he seemed to be daring all of them to stop, turning the whole thing into a spectacle of government-produced propaganda and even more personal score-settling and grievances.
Most notable was the video that was played. In it, media figures were shown early in the outbreak comparing the virus to the seasonal flu, as Trump has been criticized for doing much later on. Other clips played up the impact of his ban on travel from China, while yet more showed Trump personally making pronouncements about the steps he was taking — even at a time he was repeatedly and much more strongly downplaying the threat of the virus.
Trump was pressed on the production of the video, and he said it was made by White House officials.
Trump proceeded to downplay many complaints about the federal response, going so far as to say that there is no problem with the number of ventilators and other equipment available. The reality is significantly different, according to the states.
Trump also at one point maintained, “Everything we did was right.” When pressed on the claim, he declined to restate it but cast blame on governors for not stockpiling more ventilators.
It was soon noted that the video Trump had cued up left out a significant chunk of time in February — after the China travel ban and before Trump acknowledged the severity of the situation in mid-March — in which he didn’t take significant steps.
 |
| New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has rebuked President Trump's claims that he has blanket authority to order a reopening of the country and cease stay-at-home orders, saying Monday night that the last time he checked the US had 'a constitution...not a king'. In a heated press conference inside the White House on Monday evening, Trump asserted that his office holds 'absolute power' over the shutdowns prompted by the novel coronavirus outbreak, hours after Cuomo and governors from eight other states unveiled their own multi-state pact to co-ordinate their eventual re-openings. 'When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total,' Trump told reporters, declining to specify where his authority to overrule states resides when pressed by DailyMail.com. 'The federal government has absolute power.' But Trump's claims of total authority were quickly refuted by Cuomo, who slammed the president's 'abrogation of the Constitution' in an interview on MSNBC. |