Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Coronavirus Updates: Trump Halts U.S. Funding of World Health Organization

New York deaths spike as the state releases a revised count, and California explores steps toward reopening. Trump announces his “opening the country” council.

This briefing has ended. Follow our latest coverage of the coronavirus epidemic.

Image
President Trump departing the Rose Garden of the White House after delivering a coronavirus news conference on Tuesday.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Trump recited some of the most prominent names of Wall Street and Silicon Valley on Tuesday, business leaders who he said would be advising him in when and how to reopen the country’s economy. The announcement came after days of confusion about the makeup of what he has described as his “Opening the Country” council.

Among those Mr. Trump said he had plans to speak with were Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase; Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chief executive of Blackstone; Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple; Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook; and Mark Cuban, the billionaire entrepreneur and outspoken Trump critic.

It was not clear if all the companies and executives Mr. Trump mentioned had been asked in advance if they would serve in advisory roles to the White House. At least one person on the president’s list, who asked not to be identified for fear of angering the White House, said that no request had been made to join the list and that there had been no advance notice of an announcement.

Later, the White House sent out a news release outlining names that would serve in 17 “Great American Economic Revival Industry Groups,” which it said would work with it “to chart the path forward toward a future of unparalleled American prosperity.”

The list included Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder who owns The Washington Post and who has been singled out for criticism throughout his administration. It also included at least two friends of Mr. Trump — Micky Arison, a top executive at Carnival Cruises, and Phil Ruffin, a Las Vegas casino owner.

Other names Mr. Trump read off during his evening news briefing were Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state; Scott Gottlieb, his former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration; and Jim DeMint, the former senator and president of the Heritage Foundation whom Mr. Trump described as “a terrific friend.”

“Those are the names we have on our list,” Mr. Trump said. “The names that are, I think, the best and the smartest, the brightest, and they’re going to give us some ideas.”

President Trump, who has been under criticism for his handling of the response to the coronavirus and has seen his poll numbers drop, on Tuesday blamed the World Health Organization for what he called its failures in the crisis and said he planned to halt American funding of the organization.

The announcement came as Mr. Trump continued to be angered by criticism of his response to the pandemic, which has been assailed as too slow and ineffective, failing to quickly embrace public health measures that could have contained the virus.

“Everybody knows what is going on there,” he said, blaming the organization for what he described as a “disastrous decision to oppose travel restrictions from China and other nations.”

The president did not say whether the United States would permanently stop funding the W.H.O., saying only that it would halt payments while the administration reviewed its role in handling the virus. Last year, the United States contributed about $553 million of the W.H.O.’s $6 billion budget, a significant sum to lose in the middle of a pandemic.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly pointed to his decision to impose travel restrictions on China as proof that he responded early to warnings about the dangers of the coronavirus. He said that decision saved “thousands and thousands of lives,” and that the W.H.O. “fought us.” The president blamed the organization for a “20-fold” increase in cases worldwide.

As recently as February, the W.H.O. had advised against imposing travel restrictions to places with outbreaks of the coronavirus, saying it was not an effective way to combat its spread.

Mr. Trump has been defensive about his decision to institute early travel restrictions on China, crediting himself with saving lives while sustaining criticism for being xenophobic and racist.

But Mr. Trump has not addressed his administration’s inaction after issuing the travel restrictions, or the gap in the timeline of his response between the restrictions announced on Jan. 31 and the declaration of a national emergency on March 13.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday issued a blistering attack on the president for his handling of the pandemic, asserting that Mr. Trump had caused “unnecessary deaths and economic disaster” by ignoring early warnings about the disease, bungling the federal response and refusing to take responsibility.

In a sharply worded letter to House Democrats, released as Mr. Trump gave his daily briefing from the White House, Ms. Pelosi portrayed the president as an incompetent liar and called him a “weak person” and a “poor leader,” saying he had obscured the dire reality that the nation still lacks the tests and health equipment needed to combat the pandemic.

Image
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, center, was given the idea of adding Mr. Trump’s name to stimulus checks by the president, according to a Treasury official. Credit...Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times

President Trump’s name will appear on the economic stimulus checks that will be mailed to millions of Americans beginning next month, the Treasury Department confirmed on Tuesday.

The decision to have Mr. Trump’s name appear on the checks, which is a break in protocol, was made by the Treasury Department after Mr. Trump suggested the idea to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, according to a Treasury official. The president’s name will appear on the “memo” section of the check because Mr. Trump is not legally authorized to sign such disbursements.

A Treasury official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, denied that the decision would delay the disbursement of the checks. The decision about the president’s name on the checks was earlier reported by The Washington Post.

Representatives for the I.R.S. and the White House referred questions to the Treasury Department.

Many Americans may not see the president’s name. Those who are eligible for stimulus payments and have provided their banking information to the I.R.S. will receive the money through direct deposit.

Treasury and I.R.S. officials briefed House Democrats about the economic stimulus payments this month and said that paper checks would be issued at a rate of about 5 million per week, beginning the week of May 4, for up to 20 weeks.

A memo that House Democrats drafted after the briefing made no mention of Mr. Trump’s name appearing on the paper checks.

Video
bars
0:00/1:20
-0:00

transcript

‘That Is Not an Accurate Statement’: Cuomo Pushes Back Against Trump

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York cautioned against easing protective measures too quickly and challenged President Trump’s claim that the decision to reopen states for business was his alone.

You look at the past few days, and the number of lives lost. It’s basically flat at a devastating level of pain and grief. But it evidences everything else we’re seeing, which is basically a flattening at this level. What we have learned through this process is that our actions determine our destiny, and that’s actually good news. We changed the curve. If you start acting differently, you will see a corresponding increase in that rate of infection, and the worst scenario would be if we did all of this — we got that number down, everybody went to extraordinary means, and then we go to reopen and we reopened too fast or we reopen and there’s unanticipated consequences and we see that number go up again. We also have to be clear on who is responsible for each element of the opening. The president said last night that he has total authority for determining how and when states reopen. That is not an accurate statement in my opinion.

Video player loading
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York cautioned against easing protective measures too quickly and challenged President Trump’s claim that the decision to reopen states for business was his alone.CreditCredit...Gabby Jones for The New York Times

A day after President Trump claimed that he had “total” authority to reopen the American economy himself — a position that was widely challenged by legal scholars, governors and other elected officials from both parties — the president said on Tuesday that he would work with the states.

“I will be speaking to all 50 governors very shortly, and I will then be authorizing each individual governor of each individual state to implement a reopening,” Mr. Trump said, granting the governors an authority most contended they already possessed. Mr. Trump added that the reopenings would be “at a time and in a manner as most appropriate” for each state.

“The day will be very close,” he said, holding out the possibility that some states without large outbreaks could reopen before May 1.

Backing off an earlier, combative stance, the president said he would not pressure any governor to reopen before they were comfortable with that decision. But “they know it is time to open,” he added.

His remarks came a day after groups of governors on the East and West Coasts announced that they planned to work together in regional groups to decide when and how to reopen business.

In an extraordinary White House briefing on Monday evening, Mr. Trump had claimed that “numerous provisions” in the Constitution, which he did not name, gave him the authority to override the states if they wanted to remain closed. Legal experts, and numerous governors, said presidents had no such power.

Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington State, a Democrat, said on Tuesday that the president’s remarks were dangerous: “No one with even the most basic understanding in our middle schools thinks that we have a royalty situation where someone is vested with such a high degree of wisdom that they can countermand the duly elected governors.”

Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon, a Democrat, said the move toward reopening would be a cautious one, done incrementally. Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat who has emerged as an outspoken critic of the president, said that he would rely on the advice of scientists and epidemiologists when considering whether to reopen.

“There is no one who wants our state to open up more than I do,” he said at a news conference on Tuesday. “But no matter what the president may say, I will do what’s best to safeguard the health and safety of Illinois residents.”

Beyond Democratic governors and legal scholars, some of Mr. Trump’s Republican allies also questioned his sweeping claim of executive power. Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, a Republican who is the chairman of the National Governors Association, told CNN, “It’s not my understanding of the Constitution.’

Image
Health care workers are among the most vulnerable groups during the pandemic because of their proximity to infected patients.Credit...Ryan Christopher Jones for The New York Times

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday that 9,282 health care professionals had contracted the coronavirus in the United States as of April 9, and that 27 had died from it.

The C.D.C. cautioned that the numbers are likely higher because of inconsistencies in data-gathering and lack of information during the outbreak. The occupational status of patients was available for only 16 percent of the cases in the United States that were reported to the C.D.C.

Health care workers are among the most vulnerable groups during the pandemic because of their proximity to infected patients, a situation made worse because some have been working with inadequate protective equipment and clothing.

The report said that some health care professionals with mild or asymptomatic cases may not have been tested at all.

The 9,282 reported cases of infected health care workers are 3 percent of the total number of cases reported to the C.D.C. using a standardized form during the period from Feb. 12 to April 9. The agency said that among states with more complete reporting of the occupational status of patients, the number of infected health care workers rose to 11 percent.

Image
Outside the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center in New York on Monday. The one-day virus death toll in New York State rose again after two days of falling.Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times

New York City, already a center of the coronavirus outbreak, sharply increased its death toll by more than 3,700 on Tuesday, after officials said they were now including people who had never tested positive for the virus but were presumed to have died because of it.

The new figures, released by the city’s Health Department, drove up the number of people killed in New York City to more than 10,000 and appeared to increase the overall United States fatality rate by 17 percent, to more than 26,000.

The numbers brought into clearer focus the staggering toll the virus has already taken on the largest city in the United States, where deserted streets are haunted by the near-constant howl of ambulance sirens.

Far more people have died in New York City on a per-capita basis than in Italy, the European country with the most deaths.

The revised death toll renewed focus on shortcomings in testing that have hamstrung city and state officials since the beginning of the outbreak. A limited number of tests has been available, and until now, only deaths where a person had tested positive were counted among those killed by the virus in New York.

But for weeks, the Health Department also had been recording additional deaths tied to the virus, according to two people briefed on the matter. Those cases involved people who were presumed to have been infected because of their symptoms and medical histories.

They were not included in the counts given publicly by Mayor Bill de Blasio because no tests had confirmed that the victims had Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

Officials like Mr. Cuomo, encouraged by data suggesting a flattening curve, have begun to edge toward setting a strategy for reopening New York, partnering with other states in the Northeast, including New Jersey, to create a coordinated strategy. But Mr. Cuomo has emphasized that the reopening was dependent on New Yorkers continuing to observe the restrictions that were imposed weeks ago.

Video
CreditCredit...By The New York Times

Scientists agree that six feet is a sensible and useful minimum distance for people to separate from one another, but some say that farther away would be better.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one of the organizations using the measure, bases its recommendation on the idea that most large droplets that people expel when they cough or sneeze will fall to the ground within six feet.

But some scientists, concerned about smaller particles called aerosols and having looked at studies of air flow, suggest that people consider a number of factors, including their own vulnerability and whether they are outdoors or in an enclosed room, when deciding if six feet is enough.

Sneezes, for instance, can launch droplets a lot farther than six feet, according to a recent study, as a Times 3-D simulation shows.

No scientists are suggesting a wholesale change in behavior or proposing that some other distance from another human is better.

“Everything is about probability,” said Dr. Harvey Fineberg, the chairman of the Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. “Three feet is better than nothing. Six feet is better than three feet.”

Image
The government received over 200 applications from U.S. airlines seeking payroll support.Credit...Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The Trump administration has reached an agreement in principle with major airline companies over the terms of a $25 billion bailout to prop up an industry that has been hobbled by the coronavirus pandemic.

The Treasury Department said that Alaska Airlines, Allegiant Air, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Frontier Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue Airways, United Airlines, SkyWest Airlines and Southwest Airlines will be participating in the payroll support program, which was created as part of the economic stabilization package that Congress passed last month.

American Airlines said it would receive $5.8 billion as part of the deal, with more than $4 billion in grants and the remaining $1.7 billion as a low-interest loan. The funds are intended to be used to pay employees, and the airlines that take them are prohibited from major staffing or pay cuts through September.

American Airlines plans to separately apply for a nearly $4.8 billion loan from the department as well.

Southwest Airlines said it expected to receive $3.2 billion, about $1 billion of which would come in the form of a low-interest loan with a 10-year term.

Airlines for America, an industry lobbying group, said that as of April 9, American airline carriers had idled 2,200 aircraft and that passenger volume was down 95 percent from a year ago. The industry expects global passenger revenues to fall by $252 billion this year.

Image
Family members visit a relative through a window at the Canterbury Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center in Richmond, Va., on April 4.Credit...Steve Helber/Associated Press

Even before a single resident tested positive for the coronavirus at a nursing home in Richmond, Va., staff members were worried. Triple rooms were not uncommon. Supplies were hard to come by. And there were not enough nurses for all the aging patients inside.

All that made the home, the Canterbury Rehabilitation & Healthcare Center, an ideal place for the virus to spread, which it quickly did, with catastrophic results.

At least 45 residents of the nursing home have died after falling ill with the virus, the highest known death toll at a long-term care facility in the United States, according to an analysis of case data by The New York Times.

The facility has struggled to stop the outbreak, which has killed more than a quarter of its residents and infected about 80 percent of them, in part because of what staff members described as crowded conditions and a lack of resources.

“That’s what a virus wants,” said Dr. Jim Wright, the facility’s medical director. “A number of people with multiple illnesses, living very closely. Viruses love that.”

The Times has identified more than 2,500 nursing homes and other long-term care facilities across the United States with coronavirus cases, including the Life Care nursing home in Kirkland, Wash., which was linked to at least 43 deaths. More than 21,000 residents and staff members at those facilities have contracted the virus, and more than 3,800 have died.

Image
Neighbors visited from appropriate social distances on Saturday in Danville, Calif.Credit...Max Whittaker for The New York Times

On Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state would be moving from its broad shelter-in-place order to a more individual approach to suppressing the virus, without immediately giving a time frame for the shift.

Numbers of infections and deaths have stabilized, but he said that any decisions about reopening society would be based on “public health, not politics,” and would be gradual and depend in part on building and tracking immunity within the population.

“We are not out of the woods yet, and we are not spiking the ball,” he said.

The state, which has the nation’s largest economy, has been ahead of the rest of the country in confronting the pandemic, locking down early and so far avoiding worst-case scenarios for infections and deaths. How it calibrates reopening will provide examples of what works and what doesn’t, especially given limits on testing capacity.

Mr. Newsom warned Californians that even in the next phase, restrictions might be loosened and tightened “as we toggle from stricter to looser” interventions “as data comes in.”

The governor did offer a glimpse of what California’s “new normal” would be like. Face coverings are likely to be a feature of public life, at least for a time. Patrons of restaurants are likely to have their temperature taken before being seated and will be served by someone in a mask and gloves. Menus might be disposable.

“Normal it will not be,” he said. “At least until we have herd immunity and a vaccine.”

Video
bars
0:00/1:09
-0:00

transcript

‘We Can’t Get Ahead of Ourselves,’ Newsom Says of Easing Coronavirus Measures

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California addressed strategies for reopening the state, but cautioned against moving too fast.

I recognize what you recognize. Two things: That you individuals, through the extraordinary behavior — millions of you — because you have practiced physical distancing, the stay at home orders, you have bent the curve in the state of California. The models have changed because of your behavior. We have a state vision, but it will be realized at the local level — local governments, local counties, local health directors will have profound and outsized influence on our capacity to deliver on this next iteration in terms of our planning. Normal — it will not be — at least until we have herd immunity. And we have a vaccine because as someone like yourself that looks forward to going back out and having dinner, as the doctor said, you may be having dinner with a waiter wearing gloves, maybe a face mask. I know you want the timeline, but we can’t get ahead of ourselves and dream of regretting. Let’s not make the mistake of pulling the plug too early, as much as we all want to.

Video player loading
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California addressed strategies for reopening the state, but cautioned against moving too fast.CreditCredit...Pool photo by Rich Pedroncelli

His comments came as a top health official warned that another wave of infections was likely to occur, given how contagious the virus is.

Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Tuesday that “we’re definitely going to have a second wave” of coronavirus infections in the fall, with outbreaks likely to become a seasonal phenomenon.

“We’ve got six months now to get really prepared,” Dr. Redfield said in an interview on Sirius XM’s “Doctor Radio.” “We’re stabilized. We’re almost at the peak. I think the cases will drop fast, but what we don’t need is to have a secondary bump in June or July because certain areas of the nation relaxed their mitigation strategies too quickly.”

Dr. Redfield called the virus “the most infectious respiratory virus I’ve seen in my lifetime” and said he was especially worried about containing it in nursing homes, even with widespread antibody and diagnostic testing.

Mr. Newsom, who on Monday said that California was working with Oregon and Washington on a strategy to begin lifting stay-at-home orders, outlined several indicators that the state would try to meet before relaxing restrictions:

  • expanding testing and contact tracing, with the goal of isolating infected patients;

  • reducing the exposure of vulnerable people, such as the homeless and the elderly;

  • the ability of hospitals to handle a surge of patients;

  • a plan for businesses, schools and other facilities to open while maintaining social distancing; and

  • a plan to reinstitute restrictions if infections rise again.

Large gatherings over the summer “are not in the cards” he said. And when the school year starts in the fall students might attend in shifts staggered through the day to avoid crowded classrooms.

The Daily Poster

Listen to ‘The Daily’: 24 Hours Inside a Brooklyn Hospital

What “disaster mode” looks like on the front lines of the crisis.
bars
0:00/26:39
-26:39

transcript

Listen to ‘The Daily’: 24 Hours Inside a Brooklyn Hospital

Hosted by Michael Barbaro; produced by Annie Brown, Daniel Guillemette and Clare Toeniskoetter; with help from Alex Young and Sydney Harper; and edited by Lisa Chow, Liz O. Baylen, and Lisa Tobin

What “disaster mode” looks like on the front lines of the crisis.

interposing voices

Good morning, everyone. Hi.

sheri fink

So every morning in the Intensive Care Unit at the Brooklyn Hospital Center, the doctors gather for something called morning report.

doctor 1

So now, I want you all to present in a straight, true way —

sheri fink

The people who were on overnight, they stand around and the head doctor is there, and they kind of give a report of what happened. And then, the new doctors who are coming on, they get that information.

doctor 2

Yeah. When she was at rest this morning, she was breathing 23. She’s very comfortable, thumbs up.

sheri fink

They talk about, you know, who was admitted, who got critically ill.

doctor 3

The overnight patient is not doing well. He had to be re-intubated almost immediately.

sheri fink

And one recent morning report was particularly intense.

[music]

doctor

OK. All right. OK. Next patient.

sheri fink

There were patients in their 80s and patients in their 30s.

doctor 1

31-year-old female, 30 weeks pregnant, asthma, obesity, admitted to the I.C.U. She was intubated yesterday evening.

doctor 2

Jesus.

doctor

doctor 3

All right. Good. Next.

sheri fink

There were patients from nursing homes and patients who were homeless.

doctor 4

She was intubated overnight. She’s on azithromycin, klonopin, ceftriaxone.

doctor

OK. Next.

sheri fink

Patients with asthma and diabetes, and patients with no underlying conditions at all.

doctor

— male. We just past medical history here for acute hypoxic respiratory failure.

sheri fink

But as the doctors race to get through the cases —

doctor

Next patient.

sheri fink

— they all shared a nearly identical description.

doctor 1

He was upgraded from acute hypoxic respiratory failure.

doctor 2

OK, next.

doctor 3

Male, acute hypoxic respiratory failure secondary to confirmed Covid.

doctor 4

All right. Next.

doctor 5

Admitted for acute hypoxic respiratory failure with confirmed Covid-19.

doctor 6

Next.

doctor 7

Male, it looks like acute hypoxic respiratory failure.

sheri fink

Acute hypoxic respiratory failure secondary to Covid-19.

doctor 8

All right. Next.

michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.”

[music]

Today: It’s been more than a month since the coronavirus descended on New York City’s hospitals and on Brooklyn Medical Center, where the vast majority of patients in critical care have the virus. My colleague, Sheri Fink, followed one doctor through a single day there.

It’s Wednesday, April 15.

doctor

Morning, everybody. [AMBIENT CHATTER]

doctor 1

Josh, do you want to spend the — do you mind? This is Sheri.

doctor 2

Sure.

doctor 1

She’s with The New York Times, and she’s gonna spend some time here a little bit.

doctor 2

Pleasure.

doctor 1

It’s up to you.

doctor 2

I’m fine with —

sheri fink

I’m a physician.

doctor 1

A physician and a writer.

sheri fink

So for the past few weeks, I’ve been embedded in the Brooklyn Hospital Center.

doctor 1

I’m going to finish rounding here, and then I’m going to go downstairs and cover SI.

doctor 2

OK.

sheri fink

And what I’ve been able to see there is incredibly unique — what’s happening? What is it like inside a hospital during a pandemic?

dr. josh rosenberg

— then we’ll figure out the rest.

doctor

OK. All right.

sheri fink

Do you want to give him your mic, or are you willing to wear a mic?

sheri fink

And there was one doctor I met who really embodied that transparency.

dr. josh rosenberg

Does it beep every time I say a four-letter word like South Park?

sheri fink

Dr. Josh Rosenberg.

dr. josh rosenberg

I am mildly inappropriate. I’m just warning you.

sheri fink

An attending physician in the Intensive Care Unit.

sheri fink

How are you, Peter?

doctor

Hi, how are you —

dr. josh rosenberg

I didn’t see you hiding over there, my friend.

sheri fink

There are people from all over the hospital recruited to work in the I.C.U., so it’s not just, like, I.C.U. doctors and nurses who are used to intensive care treatment, but in fact —

dr. josh rosenberg

And she’s one of the podiatry residents, so all people who are good with knives and big needles.

sheri fink

When I was there that day, there was a podiatry doctor and two of her residents. Those are doctors who work on the feet.

dr. josh rosenberg

No, no, no. What I would like to do is that, as much as possible, we’re going to try to get all of the Covids on one side, and then the whole area is a dirty area.

sheri fink

And the I.C.U. had actually effectively doubled in size, so it was completely full. And they had to turn to other areas of the hospital to turn them into Intensive Care Units. In fact, a big part of the I.C.U. is now in a place that just a few weeks ago was where patients would come for outpatient chemotherapy treatments. That’s now in I.C.U..

dr. josh rosenberg

Frankie, watch out. Don’t trip Don’t trip Don’t trip. Don’t trip. Don’t trip.

sheri fink

It was also a bit of an obstacle course.

dr. josh rosenberg

Don’t trip.

sheri fink

There were cords everywhere.

dr. josh rosenberg

Please be careful, Do you have gloves?

sheri fink

They had pulled apart the ventilators. They had the control — parts of the ventilators that were helping people breathe, those were in the hallways so that nurses and respiratory therapists didn’t have to go in and out as much and expose themselves to risk.

dr. josh rosenberg

What?

speaker

This is a disaster waiting to happen.

dr. josh rosenberg

Yes and no, though.

sheri fink

And the nurses were doing the same thing with IVs, with the tubing that the medicine flows through. So they had pulled the IV pumps out of the room so that they can not have to go in and out and use up the personal protective equipment.

dr. josh rosenberg

It’s great. And yeah, I mean, you can trip over it.

sheri fink

You all have to be very careful.

dr. josh rosenberg

You just have to be careful.

sheri fink

Yeah.

dr. josh rosenberg

Right. It’s making the best of what you can do.

sheri fink

Yeah.

dr. josh rosenberg

OK, guys, can we start with number two? I appreciate everybody being here and everybody’s support massively.

sheri fink

So now, Dr. Rosenberg is taking over for the doctors who were working the night before, and he’s beginning to make his rounds.

dr. josh rosenberg

Let’s start with number two, and then just go around the unit please. All right, so lucky number two.

sheri fink

So nearly all the patients in the I.C.U. are on ventilators.

dr. josh rosenberg

So do we have any history of smoking, shisha use, anything like that?

sheri fink

Some have asthma. Some have diabetes.

dr. josh rosenberg

All right. What did he do for a living? Occupational exposure?

sheri fink

But a lot of these patients don’t have any underlying conditions at all.

dr. josh rosenberg

I’ll just write — because I mean, listen, on some of these you have a real reason why. You know, they may have bad lungs, and that makes it worse. Sometimes it’s just the disease, but if there’s something we can do to —

sheri fink

So Josh and the other doctors are kind of confounded by some of the patients. They don’t understand why, if they don’t have a lot of underlying health issues, why their lungs look so bad.

dr. josh rosenberg

Crap. Reported any asthma?

sheri fink

And they also just don’t have that much to offer.

dr. josh rosenberg

OK. So what are we going to do with him?

doctor

Right now, we are — well, at this point, I’m not too sure what we can do with him. We have — we tried to [VOICE FADES].

dr. josh rosenberg

So what is he on drug-wise?

sheri fink

So, I mean, for most patients, they’re trying this thing called the Covid cocktail, which is that hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. That’s that combination the President talks about a lot.

dr. josh rosenberg

I don’t think it’s doing much.

sheri fink

But there’s really very little evidence, and Dr. Rosenberg in particular is very unsure that those drugs really help.

dr. josh rosenberg

We’ll see about remdesivir, and we’ll see if we get some Covid results and see what we can do.

sheri fink

So they start talking about other possibilities. There’s this experimental drug called remdesivir that you have to apply to the manufacturer for each patient, and they have to meet certain criteria. You have to have a test result. They can’t have certain complications.

dr. josh rosenberg

How do you guys feel about Kaletra or our other PIs?

doctor

They don’t work at all.

sheri fink

There’s another drug called Kaletra that doctors think might have some effect.

dr. josh rosenberg

The data’s very — I mean, I think the data is very weak all over the place. That’s the basic problem. So I always look at it as, where are you starting these drugs? It’s near the end of a sporting event. You’re down by a lot, and I don’t care you throw out there, right? Even freaking Jordan couldn’t recover that basketball game outside of Space Jam when you’re down by 100 points and starting the fourth quarter.

doctor

That’s why I don’t think we should be giving it to patients who are already near the end.

sheri fink

So they kind of toss this around.

dr. josh rosenberg

Yeah. And so we don’t know. I mean, that’s the point. We really just don’t know our data, but like, so looking at this —

yeah. So we’ll figure out. We’ll see if we get the remdesivir, which I doubt we’ll be able to. We’ll try to get a positive test result.

Next. Let’s move on along.

OK. I.C.U. six. Going for c-section?

doctor

Supposedly today, yeah.

sheri fink

There was another Covid patient in the Intensive Care Unit on a ventilator, and she was pregnant, which adds a whole layer of complexity.

doctor

She needs another dose of decadron, and then —

dr. josh rosenberg

Decadron? No. Beclomethasone.

doctor

Oh, sorry. Beclomethasone. Did I say decadron?

dr. josh rosenberg

Yes.

sheri fink

And they actually decided to deliver the baby by c-section two months before the due date. They had to give a couple of doses of steroid medication to help mature the baby’s lungs. The whole goal was to save the mother’s life, because I think part of it is that it gives more space for the lungs to expand once the baby is taken out.

doctor

So if she’s going for a c-section then she won’t need remdesivir, right?

dr. josh rosenberg

I have no clue.

sheri fink

So far what’s known is it tends to be quite rare that a baby would be born with Covid if the mom has it. At least that’s what the early studies say.

dr. josh rosenberg

All right. Number four. Number four. How are we doing here?

sheri fink

It might be surprising how enthusiastic Dr. Rosenberg sounds while discussing these patients, but he’s leading this team. He’s trying to keep morale up.

dr. josh rosenberg

All right. So I’m going to stop here and head downstairs. Again, he’s going to take six, seven, nine. Thank you. I will circle in with you guys. Good job.

doctor

Thank you. OK.

dr. josh rosenberg

Good job.

doctor

Oh, me?

sheri fink

But actually, when we were going from one part of the I.C.U. to another —

dr. josh rosenberg

Let’s go downstairs.

[SIGHS] I don’t like taking the elevators.

sheri fink

He runs into one of his medical students.

sheri fink

Hi, guys.

dr. josh rosenberg

How are you doing, buddy?

doctor

As best as I can.

dr. josh rosenberg

One, shouldn’t you be home?

doctor

Yeah.

dr. josh rosenberg

Shouldn’t you be home?

doctor

My mom’s here.

dr. josh rosenberg

Oh, fuck.

doctor

I know.

dr. josh rosenberg

Which bed is she in on that side?

doctor

She’s in 10.

dr. josh rosenberg

OK. I’m rounding her now.

doctor

OK. May I speak to you at some point today when you have a chance?

dr. josh rosenberg

Call me at any point. All right?

doctor

Thanks, Doctor. Appreciate it.

dr. josh rosenberg

I’ll see you later. Call me if you need anything, in all seriousness. You have my cell, right?

doctor

Yeah.

dr. josh rosenberg

Perfect. He’s one of our medical students. He’s been here forever. So we sent home all the medical students that rotate with us very early in this crisis, because I kind of looked at this and I said, one, we don’t have enough PPE, you know, for all of the medical students that are coming through. And two — you know, I hate to say it like this — like, I don’t want to expose them. They have enough time to get the living daylights scared out of them.

sheri fink

Right.

dr. josh rosenberg

[LAUGHS] Let them actually be students for a bit.

[music]

[AMBIENT VOICES]

doctor 1

I’m going to give myself the option, because it’s my clinic.

doctor 2

OK, because tonight we’re going to publish the new schedule, OK?

dr. josh rosenberg

Next patient. Santos.

doctor

Yeah. So this is our — she’s our 54-year-old female, history of hypertension, came here with shortness of breath, fever, is admitted for acute hypoxic —

dr. josh rosenberg

She’s the mom of our med student, right?

doctor

Yes. She’s confirmed positive Covid.

sheri fink

And when we get to this medical student’s mom, things are not looking good.

doctor

Her FI, too, has been hovering between 100 to 80. I just want to make sure you know that she’s not doing OK.

dr. josh rosenberg

She’s not doing well. Um, yeah, I’ll speak to the son. I know him pretty well.

doctor

Yeah he’s in here always.

dr. josh rosenberg

Is he the next of kin? Is he the next of kin? He’s the decision maker?

doctor

Right now he has family —

sheri fink

And Dr. Rosenberg wants to find out, is the son — is the medical student — the one who will be making decisions about her further treatment, about even possibly end of life care.

dr. josh rosenberg

But is he giving us consents?

doctor

Yes.

dr. josh rosenberg

Or does she have a husband?

doctor

Yeah, yeah. He’s been giving consent.

dr. josh rosenberg

This is going to be hard, because he knows. He’s a smart kid.

sheri fink

I mean, to me it sounded like he feels that this medical student, even though he’s still a student, is enough of a doctor to understand that the prognosis isn’t great — that perhaps his mom has some risk factors for this being more severe, and for her to possibly not make it.

dr. josh rosenberg

He’s a good dude. He’s a very sweet man, so we’ll figure it out.

sheri fink

Of course, when it’s your family member, it’s not so simple.

dr. josh rosenberg

All right. Here.

sheri fink

There are many cases where the doctors and the patient’s families have very different views of how to proceed with treatment.

dr. josh rosenberg

Covid?

doctor

Acute respiratory — yeah. Well, it’s pending, but most likely.

dr. josh rosenberg

OK. So his pulmonary prognosis is horrible, right?

doctor

Yes.

dr. josh rosenberg

He’s not getting better.

doctor

No, he’s not.

dr. josh rosenberg

Blood gas is —

doctor

Not good enough.

dr. josh rosenberg

Not good, and he’s on 100%.

doctor

Yes.

dr. josh rosenberg

So what does the fam want us to do?

doctor

The family wanted us to continue treatment. They agreed to the NI.

sheri fink

Where the family still wants to press forward with all the intensive care available.

dr. josh rosenberg

Right. So how many organ systems do we have down on him? We have our kidneys are down, our respiratory system’s down, his cardiovascular is bad. He’s on multi-organ system failure, right? So I have three out of my systems down already. His prognosis at that point, given his disease status, is just poor, unfortunately.

sheri fink

And where the doctors had come to a different conclusion and really felt like there wasn’t much hope, and that in fact the goals of care should shift away from trying to extend life and much more toward comfort and end of life — accepting that the patient was likely going to die.

dr. josh rosenberg

And I hate to say it like this, but I don’t know what I’m able really to offer in terms of getting him back to where he was before.

[SIGHS] Next.

[music]

doctor

Check vitals from there too —

speaker (on intercom)

Attention, please. Attention, please. Code blue, 6B.

sheri fink

Suddenly, we hear this announcement go out over the hospital loudspeaker saying, code blue —

speaker (on intercom)

Code blue, 6B. [KNOCKING]

doctor

Josh?

sheri fink

— which means that somebody needs to be resuscitated, that they are basically dying.

dr. josh rosenberg

OK. It’s code blue. you’re on outreach or RESA?

doctor

RESA.

sheri fink

OK. All right. Can we follow you?

doctor

Yeah.

[music]

[AMBIENT CHATTER]

doctor 1

Covid or non-Covid?

doctor 2

No, it’s not Covid.

doctor 3

OK.

sheri fink

So the code blue, it turned out, wasn’t for a Covid patient, but for a patient who had other medical problems.

doctor

192. That’s the code for 6A.

sheri fink

And they did CPR, and the patient survived.

doctor

I got it. You’re good.

sheri fink

And for me, the moment was really just highlighting the fact that, in a hospital, that that work goes on — that there are all these other patients, too, who have different medical problems, and people are still having other emergencies. So hospitals can’t just stop being hospitals for everybody else. I But it’s hard, because the number of patients with Covid is increasing. Usually, if you have people with a scary, infectious disease you would put them in specific rooms in the hospital, but, of course now there’s many more patients than there are isolation rooms. So I think the doctors are very concerned about this possibility that somebody could come into the hospital for something else —

dr. josh rosenberg

She’s Covid negative?

doctor

— and then, you know, catch Covid there. That’s the real worst case scenario.

dr. josh rosenberg

She’s not a Covid issue?

doctor

Not really, no.

dr. josh rosenberg

Let’s try to get her the heck out of this unit, please. OK? Get her out.

sheri fink

But of course, one of the big risks is to be a person who is walking into that hospital every day to work there.

dr. josh rosenberg

Hello. Dr. Rosenberg speaking. I was paged.

sheri fink

And in fact, at one point —

dr. josh rosenberg

Yes, yes, yes.

sheri fink

Dr. Rosenberg gets word that one of his residents —

dr. josh rosenberg

He has Covid.

sheri fink

— tested positive for Covid and is in the emergency room downstairs.

dr. josh rosenberg

Thanks. All right.

What’s up? You have his X-ray up? OK. I’ll look at it in two seconds.

sheri fink

Someone pulls up an X-ray of the resident’s lungs for him to look at, and he peels off his Personal Protective Equipment, which in this case includes his own ski goggles, and he looks at the X-ray. And immediately, the tone shifts.

dr. josh rosenberg

That’s shitty. I don’t like that. I want him here. He is one to come up.

doctor

Yeah. Is that a —

dr. josh rosenberg

He comes right up, because he’s high risk for getting intubated.

doctor

Yeah.

sheri fink

What he sees on the X-ray is something that looks bad to him.

dr. josh rosenberg

That’s what I’m worried about, because his X-ray looks crappy.

doctor

You know that he works here, right? Yeah.

dr. josh rosenberg

No.

doctor

It was just, like, let’s just go back —

dr. josh rosenberg

He’s one of our surgical residents. Bring him to the I.C.U.. Bring him here. Don’t dilly. Don’t —

doctor

No, no, I’m not saying that. I’m just saying —

sheri fink

I think what was really striking to him, or what sort of, like, shocked him was that this was another doctor.

dr. josh rosenberg

That is ours. That is one of us.

sheri fink

And close to his age, and somebody who’s been doing the same kind of work that he’s doing every day. And I think that shatters that sense of invulnerability.

dr. josh rosenberg

This is insanity. For my first day after being back from a week in this crap, holy shit.

sheri fink

I actually found out partway through that day that Dr. Rosenberg, himself, had been out the previous week with symptoms of Covid. He actually didn’t get a test until his symptoms had resolved, and it turned out to be negative, but he’s pretty sure he had Covid.

dr. josh rosenberg

Well, one of the things we’ll discuss that the nurse was telling you, but we need more nurses.

sheri fink

And this is a huge problem. A third of the doctors and nurses were out sick. A number of them had tested positive for Covid and were critically ill. And it’s not just a problem for this hospital. It’s a problem all over New York City, that as the hospitals are overwhelmed with Covid patients, you have high numbers of health staff out sick.

andrew cuomo

Good afternoon. Thank you all for taking the time for being here today. As Governor of New York, I am asking health care professionals across the country, if you don’t have a health care crisis in your community, please come help us in New York now.

[music]

sheri fink

The day that I was at the hospital, New York Governor Cuomo pleaded for doctors and nurses and health care staff from around the U.S. to come to New York —

andrew cuomo

We need relief. We need relief for doctors. We need relief for attendants.

sheri fink

— in part to help fill in for the workers who are falling ill across the state.

andrew cuomo

So if you’re not busy, come help us please.

dr. josh rosenberg

Hey.

Hey, he’s going to be in I.C.U. 12, OK? No, not yet. They’re about to bring him up shortly, but we’re getting everything done.

I know.

I know. Trust me, it’s freaky. I mean, he’s only five years younger than me, you know? I’m 45, like half of our patients upstairs. We have 40-year-olds who are intubated.

Jesus.

Geez.

[GROANS] Man, this is brutal.

All right, good. I just wanted to let you know where it would be, all right? You got it. I’ll speak to you later. Bye.

[SIGHS] I am tired.

[AMBIENT CHATTER]

michael barbaro

A few days ago, as the daily death toll in New York began to decline, state officials said it appeared that the pandemic was approaching its peak, and that the worst was over. But on Monday, New York’s daily death toll spiked again to 778. So far, nearly 11,000 people in the state have died from the coronavirus. Among them was the mother of Dr. Rosenberg’s medical student, who died the day after Sheri visited the hospital.

We’ll be right back.

[music]

Here’s what else you need to know today.

archived recording

Well, yesterday, the president at his news conference — and this is his quote — he said, he has the power. He says, when someone is President of the United States, the authority is total, and he said the governors know that. Do you know that?

andrew cuomo

No. I don’t know what the president is talking about, frankly. We have a Constitution. The Constitution —

michael barbaro

On Tuesday, governors on the East and West Coast, led by Andrew Cuomo of New York, rejected President Trump’s claim that he has the legal authority to reopen the American economy by himself once he determines that the pandemic is over.

andrew cuomo

The federal government does not have absolute power. It says the exact opposite that the president said. It says, that would be a king. We would have had King George Washington. We didn’t have King George Washington, and we don’t have King Trump. We have President Trump.

michael barbaro

Appearing on NBC and MSNBC, Cuomo said that if Trump prematurely instructed states to end their lockdowns, many governors would disregard the order.

andrew cuomo

If he says to me, I declare it open, and that is a public health risk or it’s reckless with the welfare of the people of my state, I will oppose it. And then, we will have a constitutional crisis like you haven’t seen in decades where states tell the federal government, we’re not going to follow your order.

michael barbaro

And —

donald trump

As the organization’s leading sponsor, the United States has a duty to insist on full accountability.

michael barbaro

President Trump said that he planned to end U.S. funding funding of the World Health Organization, the international group responsible for monitoring the pandemic, over what he said were its failures to properly manage the crisis. Trump singled out the WHO’s opposition to banning travel from China, a position that he said has proven disastrous for the countries that followed it.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

Image
Businesses were closed along Marcy Avenue in Brooklyn on Saturday.Credit...Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times

The stay-at-home orders that have shuttered businesses around the country are sending state and local tax collections plummeting, opening yawning shortfalls in their budgets as their expenses are being sharply driven up by the pandemic.

In Oklahoma, the sharp downturn in the oil and gas markets sent tax collections down, creating a shortfall. In Michigan, more than one million people — over a quarter of the state’s work force — have filed for unemployment during the pandemic. Gov. David Ige of Hawaii told tourists to stay away, idling his state’s main economic engine.

All of which is sending tax collections way down. Sales taxes, the biggest source of revenue for most states, have fallen off a cliff as consumers stay home because of the coronavirus pandemic. Personal income taxes, usually the second biggest, started falling in March, when millions lost their paychecks and tax withholdings stopped. April usually brings a big influx of income-tax money, but this year the filing deadlines have been pushed back to July.

“This is going to be horrific for state and local finances,” said Donald J. Boyd, the head of Boyd Research, an economics and fiscal consulting firm, whose clients include states and the federal government.

On the local level, 88 percent of cities anticipate revenue shortfalls this year, and more than half are already drawing up plans to cut staff or services, according to a survey of local officials released Tuesday by the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National League of Cities.

“Our cities are hurting, and our residents are scared,” said Mayor Greg Fischer of Louisville, Ky., where authorities have recorded nearly 600 cases.

The National Governors Association is seeking $500 billion in federal aid to offset what it is describing as “drastic state revenue shortfalls.” Local officials are urging the federal government to send aid to municipal governments around the nation.

But the latest round of stimulus has stalled in Washington.

And the expenses of responding to the public health emergency are swiftly being joined by the expenses of providing services to newly-needy residents.

“What Congress must understand — and what we are shouting in unison today — is that this is not a big city problem; it’s an every city problem,” said Mayor Bryan K. Barnett of Rochester Hills, Mich., who is also president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Even if states are able to stretch their finances temporarily to cover short-term budget shortfalls, the economic recovery is expected to be slow. That means tax revenues from tourism, oil and gas drilling, conventions and other activities are unlikely to bounce back swiftly.

Image
The New York Stock Exchange is seen on Monday.Credit...Andrew Kelly/Reuters

Stocks rose on Tuesday, following global markets higher after China reported a smaller-than-expected hit to trade and some countries began to take tiny steps to reopen their economies. The S&P 500 rose about 3 percent, with shares of companies that have been hard hit by the coronavirus-related shutdowns — like cruise and casino operators — leading the gains.

Stocks have been slowly climbing their way out of a slump that had wiped trillions of value from financial markets in late February and early March, as investors have begun to look for signs of the eventual recovery from the outbreak.

Stocks were helped on Tuesday by March trade data from Chinese customs officials that was better than expected. But the optimism may not linger, as China’s reopening could be a long and painful process, worsened by slumping demand for its goods in countries dealing with the coronavirus outbreak, and as American companies continued to try to take advantage of billions of dollars in federal relief funds.

Restaurants and hotels, which have taken the largest economic hit so far from the pandemic, have received less than one-tenth of the special federal assistance for small businesses that Mr. Trump approved earlier this month. A presentation from the Small Business Administration, shared with members of Congress on Tuesday, shows more than one million loans totaling nearly $250 billion have been approved, out of the $350 billion allocated for the program.

The loans are allocated on a first-come, first-serve basis, in a process that has given an advantage to businesses with existing lender relationships and the resources to navigate the government application process. If borrowers abide by certain conditions, including spending the bulk of the money on employee payroll, they will never have to pay back the money.

Image
“We asked to wear masks, and they said it was not possible,” a crew member on the Celebrity Apex cruise ship said of her employers in an interview. “You live in constant fear of dying.”Credit...Stephane Mahe/Reuters

Disagreements about government actions, corporate inaction and, in at least one case, an accusation of official overreach brought the coronavirus pandemic into the American court system on Tuesday:

  • Abortion clinics in Tennessee and Louisiana filed lawsuits in federal courts on Tuesday to stop abortion bans related to the coronavirus. The moves bring the total of states where legal fights are unfolding to seven; the five others are Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Ohio and Oklahoma. The fight over abortion rights, rather than receding into the background during the pandemic, has intensified as several states banned the procedure in recent weeks as part of emergency measures to fight the virus. Abortion rights groups say the pandemic is being used as a pretense to restrict abortion and have sued five of the states to stop them.

  • A class-action lawsuit was filed in United States District Court in Miami on behalf of thousands of crew members who recently worked on Celebrity Cruise ships, many of whom tested positive for the coronavirus while on board the vessels. The lawsuit accuses the cruise line of failing to provide protective gear to its workers and being slow to put sanitary protocols in place.

  • The Justice Department lent its support to a Mississippi church that was penalized for holding drive-in services in defiance of a local order, saying that the law was applied unevenly and infringed on the congregants’ First Amendment rights. While the Temple Baptist Church in Greenville, Miss., is relatively small and the city government has said it would drop the fines it had issued to parishioners, the Justice Department’s support is in keeping with Attorney General William P. Barr’s efforts to aggressively defend religious freedom rights.

Image
Milan on Monday. Italy began to slowly reopen stores on Tuesday.Credit...Alessandro Grassani for The New York Times

As the United States debates when and how to let businesses reopen, Italy and Spain, the two European nations hardest hit by the pandemic, are taking small steps to begin easing the restrictions they imposed to stem their outbreaks.

After extending a lockdown from April 13 to May 3, the Italian government reopened some stores on Tuesday, including stationers, bookshops and children’s clothing stores, a sign of a gradual return to normalcy. But the loosening will not apply in regions where infection rates have yet to decline significantly — including Lombardy, Piedmont and Campania — and some other regions took their own approaches.

“Stores, bans and walks. Italy becomes a puzzle,” read a headline in Rome daily La Repubblica Tuesday, a nod to the scattered approach. Italy’s total number of confirmed cases was just shy of 160,000 and deaths surpassed the 20,000 mark on Monday.

And in Spain, more regions reopened factories and building sites on Tuesday, joining others that had already begun a gradual return to work. The easing of restrictions there has triggered a debate over safety. But many factories are so far only recalling just a fraction of their work forces. Spain registered a slight uptick in deaths on Tuesday — 567 overnight, with the total surpassing 18,000 since the start of the crisis.

Restaurants and hotels, which have taken the largest economic hit so far from the pandemic, have received less than one-tenth of the special federal assistance for small businesses that Mr. Trump approved earlier this month.

A presentation from the Small Business Administration, shared with members of Congress on Tuesday, shows more than one million loans totaling nearly $250 billion have been approved, out of the $350 billion allocated for the program. Those figures match the numbers that Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council, shared with reporters on Tuesday at the White House.

The loans are allocated on a first-come, first-serve basis, in a process that has given an advantage to businesses with existing lender relationships and the resources to navigate the government application process. If borrowers abide by certain conditions, including spending the bulk of the money on employee payroll, they will never have to pay back the money.

The S.B.A. report breaks down those loans by industry and by state. It shows that construction companies have garnered the largest share of the money thus far: nearly $34 billion, which is about 14 percent of the total. The next largest share went to professional, scientific and technical services firms, followed by manufacturers and health care companies.

“Accommodation and food services” borrowers rank fifth, with just under $23 billion in loans.

The geographic flow of the funds is not lining up thus far with the economic damage from the virus. The largest recipient state is Texas, which has secured 88,400 loans worth nearly $22 billion, followed by California with $21 billion. New York companies have secured less than half as many loans as Texas companies, worth about $12 billion in total.

At the end of last week, according to the Labor Department, about 5 percent of Texas’s labor force had filed for unemployment benefits. In California and New York, the share was more than twice as high.

Abortion clinics in Tennessee and Louisiana filed lawsuits in federal courts on Tuesday to stop abortion bans related to the coronavirus. The moves bring the total of states where legal fights are unfolding to seven; the five others are Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Ohio and Oklahoma.

The filings came a day after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed itself on medication abortion in Texas — a surprise move that means this early-stage abortion involving two pills is now allowed.

The appeals court’s reversal allows, for now, many more women access to abortion, rights groups say, but does nothing to lift the ban on most surgical abortions.

“Medication abortion is only available through 10 weeks in Texas,” said Julie Rikelman, senior litigation director at the Center for Reproductive Rights. “That’s still very difficult for many people because abortions are only available at that point in pregnancy in a few places in Texas.”

A spokeswoman for the Texas attorney general’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Joe Pojman, who heads the Texas Alliance for Life, said in an email: “We are disappointed by the court’s latest action. The latest order fails to recognize the danger that abortion providers pose to the public by refusing to comply with the Governor’s executive order in the same way that other providers of nonemergency surgeries and procedures have done.”

The fight over abortion rights, rather than receding into the background during the pandemic, has intensified as several states banned the procedure in recent weeks as part of emergency measures to fight the virus.

In seven states, state authorities have included abortion as a nonessential medical procedure, arguing that postponement is necessary to preserve medical and protective equipment. Abortion rights groups say the pandemic is being used as a pretense to restrict abortion, and have sued five of the states to stop them.

Out of the states trying to limit abortion, only Texas had been successful; the others have been blocked by judges, but that could change. Especially in Texas, several weeks of legal back-and-forth have caused confusion for patients and their doctors.

A class-action lawsuit was filed in United States District Court in Miami on Tuesday on behalf of thousands of crew members who worked lately aboard Celebrity Cruise ships, many of whom tested positive for the coronavirus while on board the vessels.

The lawsuit accuses the cruise line of failing to provide protective gear to its workers and being slow to implement sanitary protocols.

Alexandra Nedeltcheva, 54, a Bulgarian waitress, became a plaintiff after she and dozens of others on the Celebrity Apex got sick while the ship was in a French shipyard undergoing repairs. “We asked to wear masks, and they said it was not possible,” Ms. Nedeltcheva said in an interview. “You live in constant fear of dying.”

Nearly 80,000 crew members are still stranded at sea a month after cruise lines suspended operations, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many of them are in quarantine after the departures of sick passengers and crew, and still more are in limbo because of border closings around the world that prevent their repatriation.

“One of the big problems we have seen is that they are very afraid to speak up for fear of losing their jobs,” said Michael Winkleman, a maritime lawyer in Miami who filed the lawsuit.

The cruise line did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Image
A man wore a mask while making his way along the BeltLine in Atlanta this month during the coronavirus outbreak.Credit...Steve Schaefer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated Press

For close to 70 years, Georgia has had a broad ban on people donning face masks in public — a policy, a court once noted, written to combat racist violence and “to safeguard the people of Georgia from terrorization by masked vigilantes.”

But with the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urging people to wear cloth facial coverings in public, the law is now on hold. Gov. Brian Kemp, who signed an executive order on Monday to suspend the law for people wearing masks to prevent the spread of the virus, said he wanted to ensure “people can follow the guidance of public health officials without fear of prosecution.”

The law, which the State Supreme Court upheld in 1990 after a challenge by a member of the Ku Klux Klan, ordinarily makes it a misdemeanor in many instances if someone wears “a mask, hood or device by which any portion of the face is so hidden, concealed or covered as to conceal the identity of the wearer.” The measure has a list of exceptions, including permitting masks for theatrical or Halloween costumes, but there is no public health exemption.

Alarmed by an episode elsewhere that led to two men being ejected from a store for wearing masks because of the pandemic, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta had already ordered police officers in Georgia’s capital not to arrest or cite people who wore facial coverings for health reasons.

State Senator Nikema Williams, the chairwoman of Georgia’s Democratic Party, had also warned Mr. Kemp that keeping the law on the books as usual could lead to greater racial profiling of black people by the authorities.

Image
Representative Katie Porter is one of two Democrats introducing a bill to tighten financial regulations, known as the Systemic Risk Mitigation Act.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Two House Democrats want to include legislation in an upcoming economic rescue package that would tighten financial regulations and reinforce some of the provisions of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, arguing that the recent volatility in the markets is a sign that more oversight is needed.

Representatives Katie Porter, Democrat of California, and Jesús García, who is known as Chuy, Democrat of Illinois, will introduce the Systemic Risk Mitigation Act on Tuesday.

The bill would bolster the Financial Stability Oversight Council and the Office of Financial Research, two bodies that are overseen by the Treasury Department and that have been allowed to languish in terms of funding, staffing and influence by Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary.

The Trump administration has been quietly chipping away at financial regulations over the last three years, and the bill would reverse some of those efforts.

It would place more stringent requirements on shadow banks, the loosely regulated non-bank lenders that take riskier bets, by automatically designating some of them “systemically important” and subjecting them to stronger capital requirements and stress tests. It would give the oversight council the power to make rules to address risky activity. And it would create a subcommittee that would address climate risks.

“We learned in 2008 what happens when an entire sector of our economy is under-regulated,” Ms. Porter said. “I’ve seen this movie before, and I didn’t like it the first time.”

Last year, the council announced that it would use a new method to determine if firms posed broad risks to the financial system, and that it would label institutions “systemically important” only in extremely rare cases. Former regulators warned that this erosion of the post-financial crisis regulatory structure could threaten the stability of the financial system.

Mr. Garcia said that Republicans who had been talking about the need for more deregulation were trying to take advantage of the current crisis. He said that he hoped the legislation could find a home in one of the broader economic relief measures expected in the coming months.

“As Covid-19 drags us into another recession, the Trump administration’s deregulation of banks and shadow banks put us at greater risk than ever,” Mr. Garcia said.

Image
A drive-in Easter service in the parking lot of Joshua Springs Calvary Chapel in Yucca Valley, Calif., on Sunday.Credit...Mario Tama/Getty Images

A group of church leaders in Southern California filed a lawsuit on Monday against Gov. Gavin Newsom and other officials, arguing that social distancing orders violated the constitutional right to assemble and freedom of religion.

California instituted a sweeping stay at home order on March 19, and many public health officials have pointed to the early actions as critical in keeping the outbreak in the state in check.

The stay at home orders, accompanied by strict limitations on how many people can gather in public, have impacted religious services of all faiths.

The lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, argued that since the state considers “coffee baristas, burger flippers, and laundromat technicians to be so necessary for society,” religious services should be granted exemptions.

Religious gatherings have been at the center of disputes across the country and the Justice Department has signaled that it may take action.

Kerri Kupec, a spokeswoman for the department, wrote on Twitter recently that Attorney General William P. Barr was monitoring the regulations being put in place across the country.

“While social distancing policies are appropriate during this emergency, they must be applied evenhandedly,” she wrote on Saturday. “Expect action from DOJ next week!”

Before Easter, Mr. Newsom said that those planning to worship could continue to do so in a safe manner.

“As you pray, move your feet at least six feet apart from someone else,” he said. “Practice your faith, but do so in a way that allows you to keep yourself healthy, keep others healthy.”

In the middle of a pandemic, it’s natural to have moments of fear and anxiety. Sometimes, just knowing what’s happening can help, whether it’s learning about how to manage emotions on a personal level or understanding how to put the virus into context on a broader scale.

Reporting was contributed by Tim Arango, Mike Baker, Peter Baker, Katie Benner, Alan Blinder, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Julie Bosman, Jonah Engel Bromwich, Kenneth Chang, Niraj Chokshi, Michael Cooper, Michael Corkery, Annie Correal, Jim Dwyer, Peter Eavis, Thomas Fuller, J. David Goodman, James Gorman, Erica L. Green, Maggie Haberman, Jan Hoffman, Miriam Jordan, Annie Karni, Sarah Mervosh, Paul Mozur, Aimee Ortiz, Matt Phillips, Alan Rappeport, William K. Rashbaum, Marc Santora, Knvul Sheikh, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Eileen Sullivan, Jim Tankersley, Kate Taylor, David Waldstein, Edward Wong and Davie Yaffe-Bellany.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT