20,000: US death toll overtakes Italy’s

Groups warn of ‘collapse of emergency medicine’ in Japan

CHICAGO, April 12, (AP): The US death toll from the coronavirus eclipsed Italy’s for the highest in the world, surpassing 20,000, as Chicago and other cities across the Midwest braced for a potential surge in victims and moved to snuff out smoldering hot spots of contagion before they erupt.

With the New York area still deep in crisis, fear mounted over the spread of the scourge into the nation’s heartland.

Twenty-four residents of an Indiana nursing home hit by COVID-19 have died, while a nursing home in Iowa saw 14 deaths. Chicago’s Cook County has set up a temporary morgue that can take more than 2,000 bodies. And Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has been going around telling groups of people to “break it up.”

In Europe, countries used roadblocks, drones, helicopters, mounted patrols and the threat of fines to keep people from traveling over Easter weekend. With infections and deaths slowing in Italy, Spain and other places on the Continent, governments took tentative steps toward loosening the weeks-long shutdowns.

Glorious weather across Europe posed an extra test of people’s discipline.

“Don’t do silly things,” said Domenico Arcuri, Italy’s special commissioner for the virus emergency. “Don’t go out, continue to behave responsibly as you have done until today, use your head and your sense of responsibility.”

In Japan, health care facilities were getting stretched thin amid a surge in coronavirus patients, with the Japanese Association for Acute Medicine and the Japanese Society for Emergency Medicine warning of a “collapse of emergency medicine.”

Their statement said many hospitals were turning away people, rushed by ambulance, including those suffering strokes, heart attacks and external injuries. Some of those who were turned away later tested positive for the coronavirus.

Masks and surgical gowns were running short, the statement said. Japan has nearly 7,000 coronavirus cases and about 100 deaths, but the numbers are growing. The government has declared a state of emergency, asking people to stay home.

The outbreak’s center of gravity has shifted from China to Europe and the United States, which now has by far the

which are frequently fatal to birds and easily transmissible between susceptible species. North Carolina governor is Roy Cooper.

Low pathogenic cases were already in an area near the South Carolina and North Carolina state line and USDA was closely monitoring largest number of confirmed cases – over a half-million – and a death toll higher than Italy’s count of nearly 19,500, according to the tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.

The death rate – the number of dead relative to the population – is still far higher in Italy than in the United States, which has more than five times as many people. And worldwide, the true numbers of dead and infected are believed to be much higher because of testing shortages, different counting practices and concealment by some governments.

About half the deaths in the U.S. are in the New York metropolitan area, where hospitalizations are nevertheless slowing and other indicators suggest lockdowns and social distancing are “flattening the curve” of infections and staving off the doomsday scenarios of just a week or two ago.

Deaths

New York state on Saturday reported 783 more deaths, for a total of over 8,600. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the daily number of deaths is stabilizing, “but stabilizing at a horrific rate.”

“What do we do now? We stay the course,” said Cuomo, who like other leaders has warned that relaxing restrictions too soon could enable the virus to come back with a vengeance.

With authorities warning that the crisis in New York is far from over, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the city’s 1.1 million-student school system will remain closed for the rest of the academic year. But Cuomo said the decision is up to him, and no such determination has been made.

In the Midwest, pockets of contagion have alarmed state and city leaders and led to stricter enforcement.

Nearly 300 inmates at the Cook County Jail have tested positive for the virus, and two have died. In Wisconsin, health officials expect to see an increase in cases after thousands of people went to the polls Tuesday for the state’s presidential primary.

Michigan’s governor extended a stayat-home order with new provisions: People with multiple homes may no longer travel between them.

In Kansas, the state Supreme Court heard arguments in a dispute Saturday between

and testing. The case in Chesterfield County, South Carolina was expected to be another low pathogenic case, but it came back from the laboratory high pathogenic which means the less severe virus mutated into the more severe version, Cole said. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly and Republican lawmakers who overturned her executive order banning religious services and funerals with more than 10 people. New Mexico’s governor expanded a ban on mass gatherings to include churches and other houses of worship.

An AP tally from media reports and state health departments indicates at least 2,500 deaths have been linked to coronavirus in nursing homes and long-term care facilities across the United States, though the federal government has not been releasing a count of its own.

The Internal Revenue Service said the first economic support payments from a $2.2 trillion rescue package have been deposited in taxpayers’ bank accounts, but it didn’t say how many people received them or how much money has been disbursed so far.

Elsewhere around the world, Italian authorities set up roadblocks around Milan to discourage people from going on Easter weekend trips. British police kept a close watch on gatherings in parks and at the seaside on one of the hottest days of the year. And France deployed some 160,000 police, including officers on horseback who patrolled beaches and parks.

With religious leaders around the globe urging people to observe Easter safely at home, the archbishop of Turin, Italy, allowed a video streaming display of the Shroud of Turin, believed by the faithful to be the burial cloth of Jesus, so that they can pray in front of it during the epidemic.

Pope Francis celebrated an Easter vigil Mass in an empty St. Peter’s Basilica, where the footsteps of the pontiff and his small entourage on the marble floor could be heard clearly as they walked in slow procession toward the altar. Francis likened coronavirus fears to anxiety felt by Jesus’ followers after his crucifixion.

“For them, as for us, it was the darkest hour,” he said, encouraging people to “sow seeds of hope, with small gestures of care.”

Austria aims to reopen small shops on Tuesday. Spain, with more than 16,600 dead, plans to allow workers in some nonessential industries to return to factories and construction sites Monday. Spanish authorities said they will distribute 10 million face masks at major train and subway stations.

“Our scientists at the National Veterinary Services Laboratory had looked at the virus characteristics of the low path virus and they had previously indicated that this was one that was probably likely to mutate so they were watching it very closely,” Cole said.

A laboratory in Ames, Iowa, confirmed the virus with that had been killing turkeys was a high pathogenic H7N3 strain of avian influenza.

A report on the outbreak indicates in was discovered on April 6. It has killed 1,583 turkeys and the remainder of the 32,577 birds in the flock were euthanized.

State officials quarantined the farm, movement controls were implemented and enhanced surveillance was already in place in the area.

“The flock was quickly depopulated and will not enter the marketplace,” said Joel Brandenberger, president of the National Turkey Federation, an industry trade group. “Thorough disinfecting and cleaning procedures have already been initiated on premises as well as surveillance of commercial flocks in the surrounding area. This occurrence poses no threat to public health. Turkey products remain safe and nutritious.”

He said poultry farmers implement strict biosecurity measures year-round and routinely test flocks for avian influenza.

These measures were implemented after an H5N2 avian influenza outbreak that began in December 2014 swept commercial chicken, egg laying and turkey populations throughout much of 2015 killing 50 million birds and causing as much as $3 billion in economic damage. That outbreak is believed to have originated in wild birds. (AP)