Racing against time
U.S. focuses on expanding testing as coronavirus spreads
U.S. officials were focused on Thursday on expanding testing for the coronavirus, with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo saying the state tested nearly 8,000 people overnight, likely the largest surge in the country to date.
With the United States slow to roll out mass testing for the virus that has infected more than 227,000 people worldwide, officials fear the number of known cases of the highly contagious respiratory illness lags far behind reality.
“I think the spread of the virus is well in advance of any of these numbers,” Cuomo told MSNBC television. “We haven’t gotten this morning’s tally, but you’re going to see a jump astronomically - I have no doubt - because we did so many tests.”
Nearly 9,000 cases of the novel coronavirus have been reported in the United States, more than 3,000 of them in New York state, according to state health departments.
Some 151 deaths had been reported nationwide, including 21 in New York and 66 in Washington state by late Wednesday night.
Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response coordinator, agreed the most important issue at this stage was getting accurate data by implementing the widest possible testing.
“I think we need to see 100% of the cases... We’re asking every hospital, every clinic to report both the testing results and their outcomes at the hospitalization places,” Birx said on “CBS This Morning.”
NEW TRAVEL ADVISORY
The U.S. State Department is set to announce a travel advisory applying to all international travel due to the coronavirus pandemic, warning Americans to return to the United States or prepare to shelter in place, Politico reported.
The advisory, the department’s most serious warning, will also instruct Americans not to travel abroad, according to the report.
With more than 9,300 deaths worldwide so far, the fast-spreading epidemic has stunned the world and drawn comparisons with traumatic periods such as World War Two, the 2008 financial crisis and the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.
U.S. health experts fear the United States is on a similar trajectory as Italy, now the epicenter of the pandemic, where the government reported a record 475 deaths on Wednesday alone, increasing that nation’s death toll to 2,978.
New York City was considering turning some of the city’s biggest hotels into temporary hospitals to treat non-coronavirus patients and free up beds, Deanne Criswell, the commissioner for the city’s Emergency Management Department told CNN.
“If we can take and move some minor patients over to hotels or other types of locations, it will relieve the pressure on our hospital systems,” Criswell said.
Another location being considered is the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan, one of the biggest convention centers in the world, Criswell said.
U.S. stock markets, after initially falling again, reversed course in late morning trading, with the major indexes up about 1%
But the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits surged by the most since 2012 to a 2-1/2year high last week, as companies in the services sectors laid off workers with businesses shutting down due to the pandemic.