Here’s what you need to know:
- The legislation will include paid sick leave and free virus testing, aides said.
- Latter-day Saints suspend all gatherings worldwide, including worship.
- Stocks plunge despite the Fed’s $1.5 trillion offer to banks.
- The Biden and Sanders campaigns close offices and tell staff to work from home
- Italian doctors confront unthinkable choices about life and death.
- New York will ban most gatherings of more than 500 people, including at Broadway shows.
- Police and courts grapple with how to function in an epidemic
The legislation will include paid sick leave and free virus testing, aides said.
Congress on Thursday neared a deal with the White House on a sweeping economic rescue package to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.
After a day of intense negotiations between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Ms. Pelosi told reporters that “we’ve resolved most of our differences” and that the House would vote on Friday on the measure, “one way or another.” It would then go to the Senate, which called off a recess that had been scheduled for next week.
The legislation, Democratic aides said, will include enhanced unemployment benefits, free virus testing and aid for food assistance programs. The package also ensures 14 days of paid sick leave, as well as tax credits to help small- and medium-size businesses fulfill that mandate. Language was still being drafted for provisions related to family and medical leave, according to a Democratic aide, as aides worked through the night to prepare the bill.
The fast-moving measure reflects a sense of urgency in Washington to enact a fiscal stimulus in the face of a pandemic that has wreaked havoc on the financial markets, which have proven impervious to other interventions.
The negotiations hit snags as Republicans balked at the sweeping proposal to provide paid sick leave, something Senate Republicans had already blocked when Democrats sought earlier in the week to bring up a separate bill. Mr. Mnuchin, in a frantic attempt to keep talks on track, spoke by phone at least seven times with Ms. Pelosi, negotiating additional changes to the House legislation so it could have a chance of winning the support of Mr. Trump and Senate Republicans.
Ian Shepherdson, the chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, warned that even a large stimulus package might not stop the fall in markets and that the worst may still lie ahead.
“What stops the fear is evidence that the rate of increase of infections is slowing — believable evidence,” he said. “Everywhere you would look for reassurance, for leadership, for policy action, for reliable information — all are absent.”
Latter-day Saints suspend all gatherings worldwide, including worship.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced on Thursday that it was suspending all public gatherings around the world. The church is the first major religious tradition to issue such a global edict.
The measure means that the church’s more than 16 million members will not meet for worship services or other activities until further notice. Local leaders are determining how to provide the sacrament rituals to members at least once a month.
Church leaders urged members to use technology to conduct necessary meetings remotely, and promised further guidance. “We encourage members in their ministering efforts to care for one another,” the church’s top leaders wrote in a statement to members. “We bear our witness of the Lord’s love during this time of uncertainty.”
Stocks plunge despite the Fed’s $1.5 trillion offer to banks.
Stocks plunged in the U.S. on Thursday, after President Trump’s latest effort to address the coronavirus outbreak — a 30-day travel ban on people from most European countries — disappointed investors who have been looking for Washington to take steps to bolster the economy.
Trading was turbulent, with a brief rebound after the Federal Reserve offered at least $1.5 trillion worth of loans to banks to help keep the financial markets working smoothly. But the downdraft gathered pace again by midafternoon.
The S&P 500 fell about 9.5 percent, its biggest daily drop since the crash in 1987 that came to be known as Black Monday. Stocks in the United States are now firmly in a bear market, meaning they have fallen at least 20 percent from the most recent peak.
The travel ban hit shares in Europe particularly hard, with major stock indexes there down more than 10 percent. It also battered airline stocks. And with oil prices falling, energy companies were among the day’s biggest losers.
Investors have been dismayed by Washington’s inability to rally around a meaningful response to the economic toll the outbreak will take. Mr. Trump said on Wednesday that he would extend financial relief for sick workers and would ask Congress for more. But he remained at loggerheads with Congress over what should be done.
“Until there are details on the steps that leadership intends to pursue to remedy the economic effects of the viral outbreak, equity markets will be vulnerable,” said Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at Northern Trust.
The Biden and Sanders campaigns close offices and tell staff to work from home
Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s presidential campaign told staff members to work from home, closed all its offices to the public and said it would begin holding smaller events and virtual fund-raisers, according to an internal campaign memo released Thursday.
Mr. Biden’s main rival in the Democratic primary, Senator Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, took similar precautions. Mr. Sanders’s campaign said that it had asked all staff members to work from home and that it would no longer hold large events or door-to-door canvasses, focusing on digital outreach instead.
Mr. Biden — who has a famously tactile campaigning style — acknowledged in a speech on Thursday the need for “radical changes in our personal behaviors” that could affect “deeply ingrained behavior like handshakes and hugs.”
Mr. Biden’s campaign said Wednesday events in Chicago and Miami would be transformed into “virtual events” before next Tuesday’s primaries in Illinois, Florida and several other large, delegate-rich states.
The candidates’ shift away from big events is likely to hurt Mr. Sanders, who is trying against lengthening odds to overtake Mr. Biden in the nomination fight. His huge rallies have served as a show of force.
Italian doctors confront unthinkable choices about life and death.
Every day, the medical workers of northern Italy face an awful question: Which patients, whom you would have treated a few weeks ago, do you turn away now, or even allow to die?
The region, the hardest-hit in Europe, has turned into a test of the limits of a modern health care system swamped by an epidemic — and a terrifying glimpse of what other countries may soon face.
Local officials report instances of overwhelmed doctors and nurses simply leaving some elderly patients untreated; hospitals sending people with pneumonia home; and hospital staffs having to choose who to deny the use of scarce equipment like ventilators. Medical workers are collapsing from exhaustion, and taking ill themselves.
“This is a war,” said Massimo Puoti, the head of infectious medicine at Niguarda Hospital in Milan, one of the largest in Lombardy, the province at the heart of the epidemic.
This week Italy imposed the most draconian measures outside of China — restricting movement and closing most businesses — to slow the spread of the virus. But they did not come in time to prevent the surge of cases that has strained the limits of even of a well-regarded health care system.
With more than 15,000 infections diagnosed across the country so far, and more than 1,000 deaths, Italy is now an object lesson that countries need to act decisively and early, before the outbreak becomes a crisis.
New York will ban most gatherings of more than 500 people, including at Broadway shows.
New York will ban most gatherings of more than 500 people, including at Broadway shows, and restrict smaller groups, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced on Thursday.
The restrictions, intended to slow a growing outbreak in the state, are expected to have a profound impact on the city’s cultural institutions, including theater, a multibillion dollar industry at the heart of New York’s tourist trade. The ban took effect at 5 p.m. Thursday for Broadway theaters and will do the same for other venues Friday at 5 p.m., Mr. Cuomo said. The Broadway League, a trade organization representing producers and theater owners, said the closing would last through April 12.
New York State had 328 total cases as of late Thursday; 96 were in New York City and 147 in Westchester County.
California imposed new measures on Thursday, telling residents to postpone or cancel nonessential gatherings of more than 250 people through the end of March. An order from Gov. Gavin Newsom required local governments not to permit them.
California also advised against gatherings in smaller venues that don’t allow for 6 feet between people. Gatherings of high-risk people, like those in retirement homes, should be no more than 10 people, officials said.
Organizers of Los Angeles’s gay pride festival announced that, because of the virus, all events related to the 50th anniversary of LA Pride that were scheduled for June 2020 would be postponed.
Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington State said that people should no longer sit shoulder-to-shoulder in bars, and he banned public gatherings of 250 people or more in three counties in the Seattle area.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle became the first in the country to suspend public celebration of Mass. Episcopal bishops in Virginia and Washington, D.C., said that churches in their dioceses would close for two weeks.
Delays in testing have made it difficult to get a full sense of scale of the outbreak, but the epidemic is increasingly altering American life, and state, local and private institutions are taking matters into their own hands. As of Thursday evening, more than 1,600 people nationwide had tested positive and 40 had died, most of them in Washington State.
Police and courts grapple with how to function in an epidemic
With little experience in managing a pandemic of this magnitude, some U.S. courthouses and police departments have been scrambling to ensure that they can avoid a breakdown in public safety if the coronavirus outbreak significantly widens. Many are doing so in a piecemeal fashion, without much guidance on what to prioritize or how to keep operating.
“If we lose 40 percent of our force, what would police service look like?” asked Chris Davis, a deputy police chief in Portland, Ore.
Law enforcement officials said the public should be prepared for interruptions to two basic functions: quick responses to 911 calls, and the right to a speedy trial. And some police departments were making plans to quarantine their own officers if needed, as judges began to clear their courtrooms, postpone trials and restrict people who might be at risk of infection.
Those in law enforcement and public safety have extensive contact with the public, including people who call 911 for health emergencies, and are often unable to stay isolated. Some contingency plans include reallocating staff and deploying trainees and retirees; responding to fewer minor car accidents; pulling resource officers out of schools; and deprioritizing nonviolent crimes.
“This is the time to do it”: Schools shut down in Maryland, Ohio and Washington.
Officials in Maryland, Ohio and Washington State announced on Thursday that schools in those states would close for several weeks.
Ohio’s action was the most sweeping. Gov. Mike DeWine said that all primary and secondary schools would close for three weeks starting on Monday. Ohio has just five known cases of the virus so far, but the governor said the move was meant to get ahead of the spread and help save lives.
“This is the time to do it,” he said in a statement on Twitter.
Maryland officials ordered all public schools in the state to close from Monday until March 27.
And in Washington State, which has the most cases of any state in the nation, Governor Inslee said he had made the “very difficult decision” to close the schools in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties, the heart of the outbreak in the Seattle area, probably through late April.
Other school systems around the country have made more limited moves. The Archdiocese of New York shut down Catholic elementary schools from Staten Island north to Dutchess County. In Montgomery County, Pa., outside Philadelphia, the governor ordered schools, community centers, gyms and entertainment venues to close.
Universities across the country have shut their campuses and moved classes online, sending many college students scrambling to find new places to live. But widespread closures of K-12 schools are a significant shift in American life, upending child care plans and raising questions about meals and care for low-income and homeless students.
About 40 percent of the 563,600 students who attend public or charter schools in the three counties in Washington State qualify for subsidized meals, the Seattle Times reported.
In New York City, where two public schools were closed on Thursday after a child tested positive, Mayor Bill de Blasio has resisted citywide closings, citing the extreme hardship that would cause for poor students and their working parents.
“There are three things we want to preserve at all cost: our schools, our mass transit system, and most importantly, our health care system,” he said.
Pastors may have exposed thousands in Burkina Faso.
Husband-and-wife pastors from Burkina Faso who traveled to France in February were found to have the coronavirus after they developed symptoms following Sunday services at their 12,000-capacity megachurch in their country’s capital, Ouagadougou.
The possible mass exposure comes on a continent that has so far largely escaped the sweep of the virus across the globe. Egypt has the highest number of confirmed cases, with around 60, most of them aboard a Nile cruise ship. South Africa has 15, and there is a scattering of cases elsewhere in Africa, many involving Europeans.
Africa’s many megachurches and their vast congregations have been a source of worry for the spread of coronavirus, particularly after a large majority of the more than 7,800 cases in South Korea were traced back to the secretive Shincheonji Church of Jesus.
The pastors, Mamoudou Karambiri and Hortense Karambiri, had spent the week of Feb. 17-24 praying and fasting with more than 2,000 fellow evangelicals at an annual Lenten gathering in France, which has one of Europe’s highest caseloads. They then returned to their home church, Bethel Israel Tabernacle, and held a Sunday service on March 1.
After developing symptoms, they were taken to a hospital in Ouagadougou. A staff member of Impact TV, the church’s television channel, said they were in stable condition. More than 100 of their contacts were being traced, but a youth leader at the church said that if coronavirus came up in conversation, staff members at the church rapidly changed the subject, so few people know who was called for testing.
According to Le Monde, a French newspaper, almost 40 others who attended the Lenten prayer week, held in Mulhouse, France, carried the virus to other parts of France and to Guyana.
The N.C.A.A. canceled its basketball tournaments, the N.H.L. paused its season and closures abound.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association has called off the men’s and women’s Division 1 basketball tournaments, among the most-watched annual sports events. They joined a long list of event and venue closures and cancellations in a global push to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
Major League Baseball halted spring training and postponed the start of the season by at least two weeks.
The N.H.L. paused its season with its teams having about a dozen gamesbefore the Stanley Cup playoffs, scheduled to begin in about a month. “It’s the right thing to do, but obviously it stinks,” Florida Panthers center Aleksander Barkov said in a telephone interview.
The Walt Disney Company said on Thursday that it would close the Disneyland resort in Anaheim for the first time since the Sept. 11 attacks. In New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced on Thursday that it would temporarily close its three locations, including its Fifth Avenue flagship. Congress’s visitor center will shutter the Capitol to visitors until April, and the Supreme Court building is closing until further notice.
Trump says domestic travel restrictions are a possibility.
Mr. Trump said on Thursday that he could restrict domestic travel to regions of the United States where the coronavirus becomes “too hot.”
Asked by a reporter in the Oval Office whether he was considering limits on travel inside the country to hard-hit states like Washington or California, Mr. Trump said the subject had not yet been discussed, before adding: “Is it a possibility? Yes, if somebody gets a little bit out of control, if an area gets too hot.”
He did not elaborate, except to say that a containment zone New York State had imposed around the city of New Rochelle was “good.”
“People know that they’re being watched,” he said of the New York measure.
The president also said that he was canceling or deferring several political events in the coming weeks.
“We had some big rallies. We canceled one that were thinking about doing in Las Vegas, as you know. And one in Reno, Nevada.”
Speaking of political events, Mr. Trump mentioned “four or five of them that we were thinking about.” And he said he would not follow through on a planned “big one in Tampa, all sold out.”“But I think we’ll probably not do it because people will say it’s better to not do,” he said. “You know, we need a little separation until such time as this goes away.”
A top U.S. health official says coronavirus testing is “a failing.”
One of the country’s top health officials said that the government’s coronavirus testing methods were inadequate in testimony on Capitol Hill on Thursday.
Speaking at a House committee hearing on coronavirus testing, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fielded pointed questions about rising frustration over a lack of testing kits across the country.
“The system does not, is not really geared to what we need right now, what you are asking for,” Dr. Fauci said. “That is a failing. It is a failing, let’s admit it.”
Dr. Fauci had stepped in to respond to a question, from Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, to Dr. Redfield about who was ultimately responsible for overseeing testing.
“The idea of anybody getting it, easily, the way people in other countries are doing it, we are not set up for that,” Dr. Fauci added. “Do I think we should be? Yes. But we are not.”
Mr. Pence said on Thursday that thousands more cases of coronavirus were expected in the United States.
“We know there will be thousands of more cases of coronavirus,” Mr. Pence said on NBC’s “Today” show. Asked whether it could be millions, he declined to answer, saying, “I’ll leave to the experts to make the estimates of how many people will be infected.”
At another point in the testimony, Dr. Redfield told Representative Katie Porter that he would commit to making coronavirus testing available for Americans, regardless of insurance.
U.S. restrictions on travel from Europe draw anger and confusion.
On both sides of the Atlantic on Thursday, the consequences of President Trump’s decision to ban most travel from Europe began to be felt economically, politically and socially.
Traveling Americans sought to understand what Mr. Trump’s plan meant for them, and European Union leaders sharply condemned the move, even as many nations on the Continent moved to tighten their own restrictions on the movement of people.
“The coronavirus is a global crisis, not limited to any continent and it requires cooperation rather than unilateral action,” a statement from European leaders said. “The European Union disapproves of the fact that the U.S. decision to impose a travel ban was taken unilaterally and without consultation.”
Italy’s government reported more than 15,000 infections through Thursday, a jump of more than 2,000, and more than 1,000 deaths. With the worst outbreak outside of China, Italy is under a national lockdown. In France, which has more than 2,280 cases, President Emmanuel Macron, announced that the country’s schools and universities would close starting next week, and that he would speak with President Trump on Friday “to propose an exceptional initiative between G7 members.”
Mr. Trump imposed a 30-day ban on foreigners who in the previous two weeks have been in any of the 26 countries that make up Europe’s Schengen Area of open borders. American citizens, permanent legal residents and their families returning to the U.S. would not be affected; neither would cargo.
In appearances on several morning television shows on Thursday, Mr. Pence said that Americans returning from the affected area in the next 30 days would be required to self-quarantine for two weeks.
Days after being with Trump and Pence in Florida, a Brazilian official tests positive.
A senior Brazilian government official who visited Mar-a-Lago days ago, and was in proximity to Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, has tested positive for the new coronavirus, Brazil’s government confirmed on Thursday.
The official was part of a delegation led by Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, who is now awaiting results for a coronavirus test.
But Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence will not be tested, according to the White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham. “Both the president and vice president had almost no interactions with the individual who tested positive,” she said in a statement.
In contrast, the office of Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said that his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, had been tested after developing flulike symptoms and that he decided to work from home until receiving his wife’s results.
The Brazilian official who tested positive is Fábio Wajngarten, Mr. Bolsonaro’s communications chief. He was at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s oceanfront resort in Florida, as part of a Brazilian government delegation. Members of that group dined with Mr. Trump on Saturday.
In a statement, Mr. Bolsonaro’s office said it was “adopting all the necessary preventive measures to preserve the health of the president and the delegation that accompanied him on the recent official trip to the United States,” and had informed U.S. officials.
It said that Mr. Wajngarten tested positive in two separate tests after returning home with flulike symptoms. Mr. Bolsonaro was being tested for the virus, and results were expected on Friday.
Late on Thursday, Mr. Bolsonaro called on his supporters to cancel mass rallies planned for Sunday in support of his legislative agenda.
Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, who met with Mr. Bolsonaro in Miami earlier this week, said he would put himself in isolation as a precautionary measure. The office of Senator Lindsey Graham announced on Twitter that he had also been at Mar-a-Lago last weekend and would self-quarantine while he awaited the results of a coronavirus test
As of Thursday, Brazil had at least 73 confirmed coronavirus cases and more than 930 suspected cases.
A JetBlue passenger learns, in the air, that he has the virus.
A passenger on a JetBlue flight from New York to West Palm Beach, Fla., on Wednesday night learned midair that he had tested positive for the coronavirus, raising questions about possible widespread exposure.
The passenger, who had previously been tested for the virus and was awaiting results, got a notification toward the end of the flight that the test had come back positive, JetBlue said on Thursday. He was overheard talking about it, and the flight crew quickly notified health officials on the ground.
The flight, which departed from Kennedy International Airport with 114 people on board, landed at Palm Beach International Airport around 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday. Medical workers rushed to the airport shortly after, officials said.
“JetBlue had no prior indication that this customer had or may have had coronavirus,” the airline said in a statement. Both airports and the airplane were being cleaned.
Are you prepared? How to stock your pantry and other tips.
Here are tips for stocking your pantry in ways that are practical and delicious; answers to some common questions about travel, and steps to take when talking to an anxious teen about coronavirus.
Reporting was contributed by Elizabeth Dias, Peter Baker, Katie Glueck, Sydney Ember, Elisabetta Povoledo, Steven Erlanger, Alissa J. Rubin, Alexandra Stevenson, Daniel Victor, Austin Ramzy, Russell Goldman, Livia Albeck-Ripka, Albee Zhang, Derrick Bryson Taylor, Daniel Victor, Sui-Lee Wee, Annie Karni, Andrew Knoll, Marc Santora, Megan Specia, Declan Walsh, Vindu Goel, Michael Crowley, Patricia Mazzei, Nicholas Fandos, Kevin Draper, Mihir Zaveri, Katie Robertson, Elian Peltier, Jason Horowitz, Emma Bubola, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Emily Cochrane, Adam Liptak, Jorge Arangure, Matthew Futterman, Ruth Maclean, Elaine Yu, Amy Qin, Alan Rappeport, Emily Cochrane, Karen Zraick, Sandra E. Garcia, Sarah Mervosh, Scott Cacciola, Sopan Deb, Brooks Barnes, Noah Weiland, Sheri Fink, Mike Baker, Monika Pronczuk, Melissa Eddy, Roni Caryn Rabin, Donald G. McNeil Jr., Andrew Keh, Ernesto Londoño, Aurelien Breeden, Katie Thomas, Jill Cowan, Thomas Fuller, Richard Pérez-Peña and Dagny Salas.
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