U.S. braces for new outbreaks
New York hit hardest, but worrisome numbers in other major cities
New Orleans rushed to build a makeshift hospital in its convention centre Friday as troubling new outbreaks bubbled in the United States, deaths surged in Italy and Spain and the world warily trudged through the pandemic that has sickened more than a half-million people.
Punctuating the fact that no one is immune to the new coronavirus, it pierced even the highest echelons of global power, with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson becoming the first leader of a major country to test positive.
While New York remained the worst-hit city in the U.S., Americans braced for worsening conditions elsewhere, with worrisome infection numbers being reported in New Orleans, Chicago and Detroit.
“We are not through this. We’re not even halfway through this,” said Joseph Kanter of the Louisiana Department of Health, which has recorded more than 2,700 cases, more than five times what it had a week ago.
New Orleans’ sprawling Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, along the Mississippi River, was being converted into a massive hospital as officials prepared for thousands more patients than they could accommodate. The preparations immediately conjured images of another disaster, hurricane Katrina in 2005, when the convention centre became a squalid shelter of last resort in a city that has braved a string of storm hits, not to mention great fires and a yellow fever epidemic in centuries past.
As the new health crisis loomed, economic catastrophe had already arrived in the city, where many already live in poverty and the tourism industry has screeched to a halt.
“I’ve never been unemployed. But now, all of a sudden: Wop!” said John Moore, the musician best known as Deacon John, who has no gigs to perform with much of the city shut down. “It ain’t just me. It’s everybody.”
In New York, where there are more than 44,000 cases, the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 passed 6,000 on Friday, double what it had been three days earlier.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo called for 4,000 more temporary beds across New York City, where the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center has already been converted into a hospital.
“This is going to be weeks and weeks and weeks,” Cuomo told members of the National Guard working at the Javits Center. “This is going to be a long day, and it’s going to be a hard day, and it’s going to be an ugly day, and it’s going to be a sad day.”
U.S. President Donald Trump, after earlier rejecting Cuomo’s pleas for tens of thousands more ventilators, and the governor’s calls to use the Korean War-era Defence Production Act, invoked the law Friday, ordering General Motors to begin manufacturing the breathing machines.
Trump signed a $2.2-trillion (U.S.) stimulus package, after the House approved the sweeping measure by voice vote. Lawmakers in both parties lined up behind the law to send cheques to millions of Americans, boost unemployment benefits, help businesses and toss a life preserver to an overwhelmed health-care system.
The U.S. neared 100,000 confirmed cases, according to a count kept by Johns Hopkins University. Italy, the U.S.. and China account for nearly half the world’s more than 585,000 infections and more than half of the roughly 26,000 reported virus deaths.
Dr. John Brooks of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Americans remained “in the acceleration phase” of the pandemic and that all corners of the country were at risk.
“There is no geographic part of the United States that is spared from this,” he said.