Here’s what you need to know:
- White House: Anyone who has left New York should self-quarantine.
- Stocks surge on promise of a bailout as companies and workers navigate the crisis.
- Innovators race to help as hospitals plead for equipment.
- The country’s second-biggest state is not on lockdown.
- A teenager who died in California is one of the youngest victims in the United States.
- India’s prime minister decreed a 21-day lockdown for the country of 1.3 billion.
- Emerging markets could be crushed by coronavirus.
White House: Anyone who has left New York should self-quarantine.
Experts on the White House Coronavirus Task Force expressed alarm on Tuesday over infection rates in New York City, and advised people who have passed through or left the city to place themselves into 14-day quarantine.
New York City is now being treated the way parts of China and Europe have been viewed, as an epidemiological hot zone. As of Tuesday morning, New York State had 25,665 cases, with at least 157 deaths. There were around 15,000 cases in New York City alone.
On Tuesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida expanded his efforts to quarantine visitors from New York, saying he would sign an order extending a self-isolation requirement to anyone who had traveled from the New York area in the last three weeks. Dr. Birx said that about 60 percent of all the new cases in the country were coming out of the metro New York area.
“New York City definitely is a very hot spot,” President Trump said.
Even as nations from Britain to India declare nationwide economic lockdowns, President Trump said he “would love to have the country opened up, and just raring to go, by Easter,” less than three weeks away, a goal that top health professionals have called far too quick.
“I think it’s possible, why not?” he said with a shrug.
Stocks surge on promise of a bailout as companies and workers navigate the crisis.
The S&P 500 had its biggest daily gain since 2008 on Tuesday, rising more than 9 percent, as Congress neared agreement on a stimulus bill to stabilize America’s faltering economy. Shares of companies likely to receive bailouts, such as airlines, cruise lines and casinos, soared. Norwegian Cruise Lines was the best performing stock in the S&P 500 on Tuesday, jumping more than 40 percent, while Delta, American Airlines and United Airlines all rose more than 20 percent.
But investors are still fragile and could sour on stocks if the promised deal hits a snag again. The U.S. government will report weekly jobless claims on Thursday, and some analysts expect the data to show that millions of Americans became unemployed last week.
Innovators race to help as hospitals plead for equipment.
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transcript
Coronavirus Has Hospitals in Desperate Need of Equipment. These Innovators Are Racing to Help.
Health care workers are facing a serious shortage of critical equipment needed to treat the coronavirus. We spoke to the makers who are building innovative protective gear and ventilators for them.
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Health care workers around the world are asking for help. “What do you want?” “PPE.” “When do you need it?” “Now.” They’re in desperate need of more PPE, also known as personal protective equipment. Stocks of the critical gear are disappearing during the coronavirus pandemic. Doctors say they are rationing gloves, reusing masks and raiding hardware stores. The C.D.C. has even said that scarves or bandannas can be used as protection as a last resort. “I’ve met the doctors, and talked with them every day. I think there’s an interesting challenge here in that, currently, there’s such a need that if they had anything, they would deploy it.” The cries for help are mobilizing a wide range of innovators, some of them even joining forces through online messaging platforms like Slack. These are engineers, doctors and even high school students from around the world. They come from all walks of life, but say their goal is the same. “It’s amazing because no one’s asking which country are you from? They’re just like, how can I help? What do you need?” They’re pitching in by crowdsourcing designs for masks, face shields and even ventilators that could be reproduced around the world. This is Nick Moser. He’s an active player in one of the maker groups. His day job is at a design studio. Now, he’s designing replicable face masks. “We’re focused on three products: a face shield, a cloth mask and an alternative to N95-rated respirators. The face shield is the first line of defense for medical workers. It protects against droplets. If a patient coughs, it’ll hit the face shield rather than them.” Some designs are produced using 3-D printers or laser cutters. “There you go.” Then, the prototypes are field-tested by health care workers. Even some university labs are experimenting with DIY techniques. A group at Georgia Tech is working with open-source designs from the internet to develop products. “My lab works in the area of frugal science, and we build low-cost tools for resource-limited areas. And now, we’ve realized that I don’t have to go that far. It’s in our backyard, right? We need it now. So this is a plastic sheet I have — not too different from what you would get out from a 2-liter Coke or a soda bottle. I actually bought this from an art store. It’s just sheets of PET, so we can cut these out. We are calling this an origami face shield, and it’s the Level 1 protection. This is one idea. There are multiple different prototypes.” “This headband can be reused, and a doctor or nurse could just basically tear this off and basically snap another one on. We’re hearing that, in some cases, that they go through close to 2,000 of these a day.” Because the need is growing so rapidly, the makers are also thinking about how to increase their production. “So how do we get from this one that someone made at home on a laser cutter or a 3-D printer, and then get it in the hands of thousands of doctors and front-line workers?” They’re working with mass manufacturers that can take their tested designs, and replicate them at a larger scale. “We’ve been on the phone talking to a number of suppliers, material suppliers. So I think one of the neat things that we’ve done is not only the design, proving that you can make it rapidly, but then also trying to secure the entire supply chains.” This is Dr. Susan Gunn, whose hospital system in New Orleans has even started its own initiative to 3-D print equipment. “So it starts with an idea. We put the idea into place. And then we make sure that it’s professional-grade first. Infection control is looking at it, and we’re making sure that we’re using the correct materials that would be approved by the C.D.C. and the World Health Organization.” Dr. Gunn says the gear is a safe alternative for those who might otherwise face a shortage. “We’re creating face shields and we’re creating these different PPEs, and we’re putting them in the hands where people felt like they needed them.” Another critical piece of equipment is the N95 mask, and the supply is dwindling fast. Nick and his team are designing a robust alternative for this mask that can hold any filter material, and be mass produced. “It is easily printable. This one is used in medical situations where there’s an actively infectious patient. So nursing homes or obviously I.C.U. units would be the target to receive these.” “These are really hard objects to manufacture because you’re going to give it to a nurse, and then I want to be really confident that it will not let a virus through, right?” This equipment is not approved by federal agencies, but the designers are testing their respirator prototypes for safety. “That was basically the first, almost the first question that was asked. Can we do anything that’s actually going to be safe and helpful?” Some makers are pursuing even more ambitious projects. An engineer named Stephen Robinson in New Haven, Conn., is working on designing ventilators to help patients breathe. Countries are facing a dire shortage of the lifesaving machines. Right now, these DIY ventilators are still prototypes. “So really, this should be thought of as the seed of an idea that could potentially be grown with, and absolutely requiring, the medical and the tech communities.” But they could become key if critical supplies run out. “We’re in very uncertain times, and I see explorations and projects as kind of an insurance policy that could potentially be leaned on if there was extreme circumstances.” Health care workers are hopeful that these efforts could prevent an even worse outcome. “We don’t want anybody — let’s be clear — to use a bandanna to protect themselves. I hope it never gets to the point where we have to wear a bandanna. And I don’t think, with this initiative that we will get there.” For innovators like Saad, the challenge is personal. “I just can’t stop. I have to do stuff. And then I’m currently at a hospital. That’s why I have this uplifting little flower portrait. We’re expecting a baby boy, and what do we tell him when he grows up about what we did when society needed us?”
Health care workers on the front lines of the pandemic are in desperate need of more personal protective equipment. The C.D.C. has even said scarves or bandannas can be used for protection as a last resort.
This growing demand has mobilized a wide range of innovators, including engineers and high school students, many of them sharing information through online platforms like Slack. They’re pitching in by designing 3D printable masks and face shields that can be reproduced around the world. Some of this equipment is already in the hands of clinicians, and the makers are looking to drastically scale up their production soon.
Doctors are hopeful that these types of efforts will prevent the problem from getting worse. “I hope it never gets to the point where we have to wear a bandanna,” said Dr. Susan Gunn, a senior physician in pulmonary and critical care at Ochsner Health. “And I don’t think with this initiative we’ll get there.”
The country’s second-biggest state is not on lockdown.
Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday continued to resist calls to issue a statewide order to keep millions of Texans in their homes as protection against the fast-moving virus, but he used strong language to encourage Texans to stay indoors.
“The best thing that you can do to ensure that we are not spreading Covid-19 in the state of Texas is stay home, unless you need to be out,” Mr. Abbott said, referring to the disease caused by the coronavirus.
The country’s second-biggest state has been improvising its way through the crisis, influenced at times by the sheer span of Texas, by its partisan divides, by its rural-versus-urban split, by its top leaders’ support of Mr. Trump and by its small-government, low-regulation mythos.
A regulatory patchwork has unfolded in recent days, with restrictions, curfews and stay-at-home orders that change from county to county. Lacking a statewide mandate, several cities and counties have issued their own stay-at-home orders for residents, covering cities like Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, Houston, Fort Worth, Arlington and El Paso.
Texas has more than 700 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 11 deaths, with most of the cases in major metropolitan areas. In nearly 190 of the state’s 254 counties, the most of any state, there are no confirmed cases at all.
A teenager who died in California is one of the youngest victims in the United States.
A person under the age of 18 died from the disease caused by the coronavirus, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said on Tuesday, becoming one of the youngest victims in the United States.
The death in Los Angeles County, Calif., was the first known instance of a minor dying from the coronavirus in the United States. Some states, including New York, which has the most deaths in the country, have not reported the ages of most victims.
The young victim was from Lancaster, Calif., officials said. They did not provide any more details about whether the person had underlying health conditions.
While the risk of dying is significantly higher in older people, C.D.C. data on nearly 2,500 of the first recorded cases in the United States has shown that younger adults made up a significant portion of coronavirus hospitalizations.
India’s prime minister decreed a 21-day lockdown for the country of 1.3 billion.
India, the world’s second-most populous country, will order its 1.3 billion people to stay inside their homes for three weeks to try to curb the spread of the coronavirus, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared on Tuesday.
The extensive lockdown order was declared a day after the authorities there grounded all domestic flights.
“Every district, every lane, every village will be under lockdown,” he said. “If you can’t handle these 21 days, this country will go back 21 years.”
Though India’s number of reported coronavirus cases remains relatively low, around 500, the fear is that if the virus hits as it has in the United States, Europe or China, it could be a disaster far bigger than anywhere else.
Emerging markets could be crushed by coronavirus.
As the coronavirus pandemic brings the global economy to an astonishing halt, the world’s most vulnerable countries are suffering intensifying harm.
Businesses faced with the disappearance of sales are laying off workers. Households short of income are skimping on food. International investment is fleeing so-called emerging markets at a pace not seen since the global financial crisis of 2008, diminishing the value of currencies and forcing people to pay more for imported goods like food and fuel.
From South Asia to Africa to Latin America, the pandemic is confronting developing countries with a public health emergency combined with an economic crisis, each exacerbating the other. The same forces are playing out in wealthy nations, too. But in poor countries — where billions of people live in proximity to calamity even in the best of times — the dangers are amplified.
Cities are threatened by their own density.
It has been an especially painful realization in major cities: The very thing that makes cities remarkable — the proximity of so many people to one another — is now making them susceptible in a pandemic. Density, suddenly, is bad for our health. And we are trying everything we can think of to dismantle it.
Special grocery store hours for older people — those are about reducing density. Closed schools and dispersed children — the same.
Telework is the least dense version of office life; takeout the least dense way to eat someone else’s cooking. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has even suggested opening roads normally reserved for cars to pedestrian traffic. An empty street is the least dense way to walk somewhere, even in a seemingly empty city.
“There is a density level in NYC that is destructive,” he tweeted Sunday, after similar comments at one of his daily press briefings. He’d seen New Yorkers out in parks together, behaving as if this were a normal sunny spring weekend, and he was dismayed. Togetherness itself could now be deadly.
“It has to stop and it has to stop now,” he tweeted. “NYC must develop an immediate plan to reduce density.”
Seeing the coronavirus as a marathon fight? Here are some tips.
Experts say the coronavirus crisis is likely to last for a long time — and for many people confined to their homes, the novelty is beginning to wear off. Here are some tips to help you fight the burnout you may feel, manage your antsy teenagers, and even freshen up your home to make it better suited to meet your new needs.
