Trump takes action as coronavirus threat sinks in,
President imposes travel restrictions as impact of Covid-19 felt across the US
Abasketball tournament, with no fans. A St Patrick’s Day with no parades. College campuses with no students. Corporate headquarters with barren cubicles.
The United States snapped to attention yesterday as coronavirus was declared a pandemic, stocks slid into bear market territory and the American public finally began to come to grips with the outbreak. President Donald Trump held a rare prime-time address from the Oval Office to calm the public.
Health and government officials have been sounding the alarm about the virus for nearly two months as it infected and killed thousands of people, pinballing from China to Iran to Italy and beyond before striking Seattle in the first deadly outbreak in the US.
But yesterday was the moment that the larger American public came to the dawning realisation that the toll of the virus would be unavoidable for months to come, perhaps longer.
The signs were everywhere yesterday. The NCAA announced that the rite of spring for so many Americans — its college basketball tournament — would be played before largely empty arenas. Around the same time, the White House scheduled a nationally televised address. News feeds lit up with cancellations of St Patrick’s Day parades, major university systems in California, New York and elsewhere ending classes for the term and late-night comedians making plans to film without live studio audiences.
CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell solemnly declared during an evening broadcast that two employees of the network had tested positive and those who worked closely with them had been asked to self-quarantine.
Later in the day, Hollywood icon Tom Hanks announced that he and his wife have tested positive for the virus. Just as the Hanks’ news was bouncing around the internet and on people’s phones, the NBA said it was suspending its basketball season until further notice.
In his prime-time address, Trump declared that he is sharply restricting passenger travel from 26 European nations to the US beginning tomorrow (NZT). Trump said the month-long restrictions wouldn’t apply to the United Kingdom, and there would be exemptions for “Americans who have undergone appropriate screenings”. He said the US would monitor the situation to determine if travel could be reopened earlier.
“We are all in this together,” Trump said.
The Oval Office address was an abrupt shift in tone from a President who has repeatedly sought to downplay the severity of the threat, telling people: “It will go away, just stay calm.” Many Americans shared a similar mindset in recent weeks, but the events of yesterday changed the mood.
Officials in some American cities, including the hot spots of Seattle and the San Francisco Bay Area, banned large gatherings of people, while celebrations including Chicago’s St Patrick’s Day parade were cancelled.
The World Health Organisation called the crisis a pandemic, a step it had previously resisted.
By using the charged word “pandemic” after shying away from calling it so earlier, the United Nations health agency sought to shock lethargic countries into pulling out all the stops.
“We have called every day for countries to take urgent and aggressive action. We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said yesterday.
“All countries can still change the course of this pandemic. If countries detect, test, treat, isolate, trace and mobilise their people in the response,” he said. “We are deeply concerned by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction.”
Stocks plunged, and the S&P 500 was on the cusp of falling into bear
territory at nearly 20 per cent lower than the record set just last month.
In Washington State, after Governor Jay Inslee announced a ban on events of more than 250 people in the greater Seattle area, the Seattle Public School system said it would close for at least two weeks for its 53,000 students.
Covid-19 has killed more than two dozen in the Seattle area.
Seattle Public Schools superintendent Denise Juneau called it “an unprecedented situation”.
As of yesterday, 38 people had died in the US, and more than 1300 people had tested positive for coronavirus.
That’s far less than the toll in other parts of the globe: in Italy, where more than 12,000 people had tested positive and more than 800 people have died, the situation was so dire that all stores except pharmacies and food markets were ordered closed.
For most people, coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and a cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia.
The vast majority of people recover.
According to the World Health Organisation, people with mild illness recover in about two weeks, and those with more severe illness may take three to six weeks to recover. In mainland China, where the virus first exploded, more than 80,000 people have been diagnosed and more than 60,000 have so far recovered.
In New York City, only a few dozen people have been diagnosed with Covid-19, but the virus is still all that anyone was talking about.
Subway trains, usually jam-packed at rush hour, were unusually uncrowded yesterday.
Some grocery stores across the city, which ran out of hand sanitiser days ago, have shelves emptied of other items, like bottled water.
Late night comedians made plans to start filming without live audiences.
NBC’s Late Night With Seth Myers tweeted it was following guidance by New York City officials.
“We hope to do our part to help to decrease the rate of transmission in our communities,” it wrote.
With 12,462 cases and 827 deaths, Italy said all shops and businesses except pharmacies and grocery stores would be closed from last night and designated billions in financial relief to cushion economic shocks in its latest efforts to adjust to the fastevolving crisis that silenced the usually bustling heart of the Catholic faith, St Peter’s Square.
In Iran, by far the hardest-hit country in the Middle East, the senior Vice-President and two other Cabinet ministers were reported to have been diagnosed with Covid-19. Iran reported another jump in deaths, by 62 to 354 — behind only China and Italy.
Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte said it was necessary to “go another step” in toughening the already unprecedented travel and social restrictions that took effect on Tuesday by shuttering pubs, restaurants, hair salons, cafeterias and other businesses that can’t operate with a metre of space between workers and customers.
“In this moment, all the world is looking at us for the number of infections, but also . . . see great resistance,” Conte said on Facebook Live.