The inability of the United States to provide broad diagnostic testing, widely seen as a pivotal failing in the nation’s effort to contain the virus, has been traced to the botched rollout by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the tardy response by the Food and Drug Administration and supply shortages of swabs and masks.
But the fragmented, poorly organized American health care system has also made it difficult for hospitals and other medical providers to quickly overcome obstacles to testing.
The picture for testing is improving, slowly. The United States is completing more than 300,000 tests a day, double the amount of a month ago, according to The Covid Tracking Project.
Still, the level of testing in the United States is orders of magnitude less than what many epidemiologists say it should be. The country should be doing at least 900,000 tests a day — and as many as 20 million — to yield an accurate picture of the outbreak, they say. The need for extensive testing is even more acute as many governors have reopened their states before the epidemic has crested. Without sufficient testing it will be hard to identify and contain new outbreaks.
Most testing is not done by public health authorities — whose labs have been chronically underfunded — but by hospital laboratories and major for-profit testing companies.
There have been calls for more than a decade to create a national laboratory system that could oversee a testing response in a public health crisis. An effort to create one 10 years ago withered away over time because of a lack of funding.
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Sami Adamson, a freelance scenic artist, had to wait more than two months to collect unemployment benefits from New Jersey after applying.Credit...Hannah Yoon for The New York Times[/caption]Jobless claims reach 38.6 million in nine weeks.
Even as restrictions on businesses began lifting across the United States, another 2.4 million workers filed for jobless benefits last week, the government reported Thursday, bringing the total of new claims to more than 38 million in nine weeks.
A recent household survey from the Census Bureau suggests that the pain is widespread: Forty-seven percent of adults said they or a member of their household had lost employment income since mid-March. Nearly 40 percent expected the loss to continue over the next four weeks.
And there is increasing concern that many jobs are not coming back, even for those who consider themselves laid off temporarily.
Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford University economist who is a co-author of an analysis of the pandemic’s effects on the labor market, estimates that 42 percent of recent layoffs will result in permanent job losses. “I hate to say it, but this is going to take longer and look grimmer than we thought,” he said of the path to recovery.
Against Trump’s wishes, the push to vote by mail is growing in several states.
Mr. Trump is continuing to rail against voting by mail, which is increasingly viewed as a necessary option for voting amid a pandemic.
His antipathy, however, has done little so far, to slow its growth as an option in both Democratic and Republican states. Eleven of the 16 states that limit who can vote absentee have eased their election rules this spring to let anyone cast an absentee ballot in upcoming primary elections — and in some cases, in November as well. Another state, Texas, is fighting a court order to do so.
Four of those 11 states are mailing ballot applications to registered voters. And that doesn’t count 34 other states and the District of Columbia that already allow anyone to cast an absentee ballot, including five states in which vote-by-mail is the preferred method by law.
Part of the growth is because of the specter of people voting and getting sick amid the pandemic, as happened in Wisconsin last month. But part reflects the growth of voting by mail as an increasingly desired option even before the coronavirus. In 2016, nearly one in four voters cast absentee or mail ballots, twice the share just 16 years ago, in 2004.
Nearly one in four New Yorkers lacks adequate food, the city says.
Two months into the coronavirus pandemic, with hundreds of thousands of people out of work, nearly one in four New Yorkers needs food, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Thursday.
To address the problem, the city plans to increase to 1.5 million the number of meals it distributes each day by next week, officials said, with a million to be delivered and 500,000 available for pickup at schools.
Before the virus hit, Mr. de Blasio said, officials believed that “somewhere over a million” city residents “were food-insecure, needed food more, at some point in the year.”
As a result of the pandemic, he said, “we think that number is two million or more. So almost a doubling. That’s why we have made food such a central part of what we do in response to this crisis.”
The city has been expanding its food-distribution efforts for weeks and has given out 32 million meals during the crisis, the mayor said.
The mayor’s announcement came after a series of complaints about the quality and nutritional value of food delivered to some residents.
Subway ridership is up 50 percent from last month, but still far below normal.
New Yorkers are slowly beginning to return to the subway system, in another sign that Americans at the center of the global coronavirus pandemic are eager for a return to normalcy.
Subway rides are now averaging 600,000 a day, after a low of 400,000 in April, Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials said Wednesday.
Bus ridership is up too, from a low of 400,000 to some 700,000 trips a day.
The nation’s biggest mass transit system saw its ridership plummet over 90 percent, in part by government order: Only essential workers are supposed to use it, along with people who absolutely need to.
“The goal will have to be, being absolutely vigilant about your mask use and putting as much distance from yourself and the next person as possible,” she said.
Since the statewide stay-at-home order was announced in late March for all non-essential workers, those essential workers who have had to keep taking mass transit have reported crowded subway cars and buses during rush hours.
The head of buses, Craig Cipriano, urged non-essential workers to avoid riding the buses over the Memorial Day weekend. “We can’t risk overwhelming the system. Part of keeping everyone safe for now is staying off the buses,” he said. “So please don't try to take them to the beach this weekend. We need all New Yorkers to do their part, that means staying away for now.”
The MTA has instituted measures to protect its workers, like protective plastic barriers in work places and on buses, rear door boarding for buses, and it is increasing its “temperature brigades.” Next week, it will roll out its experimental UV light treatment at a few limited locations.
Michael Cohen was released from prison amid coronavirus concerns.
Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, was released from a federal prison on Thursday on furlough and returned to his home in Manhattan, one of his lawyers said. He had asked to be released over health concerns tied to the coronavirus.
Mr. Cohen, 53, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to campaign finance violations and other crimes, had been serving his sentence at a minimum-security camp about 75 miles northwest of New York City.
His projected release date was November 2021. A law enforcement official said it was expected that Mr. Cohen would serve the balance of his sentence under home confinement.