N.Y. governor pleads for health volunteers
NEW YORK — New York’s governor issued an urgent appeal for medical volunteers Monday amid a “staggering” number of deaths from the coronavirus, as he and health officials warned that the crisis unfolding in New York City is just a preview of what other communities across the U.S. could soon face.
“Please come help us in New York now,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said as the state’s death toll climbed by more than 250 in a single day to a total of more than 1,200 victims, most of them in the city. He said an additional 1 million health care workers are needed to tackle the crisis.
“We’ve lost over 1,000 New Yorkers,” Cuomo said. “To me, we’re beyond staggering already. We’ve reached staggering.”
Even before Cuomo’s appeal, close to 80,000 former nurses, doctors and other professionals in New York were stepping up to volunteer, and a Navy hospital ship, also sent to the city after 9/11, had arrived with 1,000 beds to relieve pressure on overwhelmed hospitals.
Earlier Monday, President Donald Trump defended his decision to extend restrictive social-distancing guidelines through the end of April.
“Challenging times are
ahead for the next 30 days,” Trump said during a Rose Garden news conference. He called refraining from public outings “our shared patriotic duty” during the outbreak.
The comments came a day after Trump reversed course and announced that he would not be moving to ease the guidelines and get the economy back up and running by Easter, as he said last week he hoped to do.
In the face of stark projections from his team and images of overwhelmed hospitals in his native New York City, Trump instead extended to April 30 the social-distancing guidelines, which had been set to expire Monday. Many states and local governments already have stiffer controls in place on mobility and gatherings.
“The worst that could happen is you do it too early and all of a sudden it comes back,” Trump said during a nearly hourlong call-in interview with Fox & Friends as members of his coronavirus task force fanned out across other media outlets to warn the virus’s spread was only just beginning.
In California, officials put out a call similar to New York’s as coronavirus hospitalizations have doubled over the past four days and the number of patients in intensive care has tripled.
“If you’re a nursing school student, a medical school student, we need you,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said. “If you’ve just retired in the last few years, we need you.”
With cases growing nationwide, Trump said the U.S. government is sending an additional 1,000 ventilators over the next two days to Michigan, New Jersey, Illinois, Louisiana and Connecticut.
“Challenging times are ahead for the next 30 days, and this is a very vital 30 days,” Trump told reporters. “The more we dedicate ourselves today, the more quickly we will emerge on the other side of the crisis.”
The U.S. reported over 160,000 infections and over 3,000 deaths, with New York City the nation’s worst hot spot, but with New Orleans, Detroit and other cities also seeing alarming clusters.
“Anyone who says this situation is a New York City-only situation is in a state of denial,” Cuomo said. “You see this virus move across the state. You see this virus move across the nation. There is no American who is immune to this virus.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious-disease expert, similarly warned that smaller cities are likely about to see cases “take off” the way they have in New York City.
“What we’ve learned from painful experience with this outbreak is that it goes along almost on a straight line, then a little acceleration, acceleration, then it goes way up,” he said on ABC’s Good Morning
America.
TESTING AT ISSUE
In a conference call Monday, Trump told governors that he had not “heard about testing in weeks,” suggesting that a chronic lack of kits to screen people for the coronavirus is no longer a problem.
But governors painted a different picture on the ground.
Gov. Steve Bullock,
D-Mont., said that officials in his state were trying to do “contact tracing” — tracking down people who have come into contact with those who have tested positive — but that they were struggling because “we don’t have adequate tests,” according to an audio recording of the conversation obtained by The
New York Times.
“Literally we are one day away, if we don’t get test kits from the CDC, that we wouldn’t be able to do testing in Montana,” Bullock said, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Bullock, whose state is heavily rural, tried to stress the disparity Montana faces in trying to mitigate the spread of the virus because of the lack of testing.
Trump initially said that Fauci could respond to the question but then quickly offered a rejoinder. “I haven’t heard about testing in weeks,” the president said. “We’ve tested more now than any nation in the world. We’ve got these great tests, and we’re coming out with a faster one this week.” Reiterating his point, Trump added, “I haven’t heard about testing being a problem.”
Although testing has picked up since a series of setbacks left the United States behind, governors have continued to warn in recent days that their response is still hampered by shortages, including of basic supplies like swabs. Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington told CNN on Sunday that “we have a desperate need for the testing kits.” And Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia warned last week that there was a shortage of testing materials in his state.
The president has recently taken to pointing to the volume of tests that have been administered — a misleading figure because, according to health experts, the more relevant figure is how many people are being tested per capita. In that regard, the United States still lags well behind other nations like South Korea.
Other governors also made it clear to Trump that they needed more supplies, if somewhat more delicately. Gov. Roy Cooper, D-N.C., told Trump, “As much as you can send us is very much appreciated.”
That prompted the president to note that “we have a lot of planes coming in” and that “Boeing gave us their big, monster cargo plane; it’s the biggest cargo plane in the world.”
WORLD TOLL CLIMBS
In Europe, hard-hit Italy and Spain saw their death tolls climb by more than 800 each, but the World Health Organization’s emergency chief said cases there were “potentially stabilizing.” At
the same time, he warned against letting up on tough containment measures.
“We have to now push the virus down, and that will not happen by itself,” Dr. Michael Ryan said.
Three-quarters of a million people worldwide have become infected and more than 37,000 have died, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University.
For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. But for others, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, the virus can cause severe symptoms like pneumonia. More than 160,000 people have recovered, according to Johns Hopkins.
Italy’s death toll climbed to nearly 11,600. But in a bit of positive news, newly released numbers showed a continued slowdown in the rate of new confirmed cases and a record number of people recovered.
“We are saving lives by staying at home, by maintaining social distance, by traveling less and by closing schools,” said Dr. Luca Richeldi, a lung specialist.
At least six of Spain’s 17 regions were at their limit of intensive care unit beds, and three more were close to it, authorities said. Crews of workers were frantically building more field hospitals.
Nearly 15% of all those infected in Spain, almost 13,000 people, are health care workers, hurting hospitals’ efforts to help the tsunami of people gasping for breath.
In Japan, officials announced a new date for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics — summer of 2021 — as a spike in reported infections fueled suspicions that the government had been understating the extent of the country’s outbreak in recent weeks while it was still hoping to salvage the Summer Games.
Japanese automaker Toyota halted production at its auto plants in Europe, but all of its factories in China resumed work Monday.
Moscow’s Mayor Sergei Sobyanin locked down its 12 million people as Russia braced for sweeping nationwide restrictions.
Israel said 70-year-old Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is quarantining himself after an aide tested positive for the virus.
In Britain, Prince Charles, the heir to the throne who tested positive for the virus, ended his period of isolation and is in good health, his office said.
The crisis in China, where the outbreak began in late December, continued to ease. China on Monday reported 31 new covid-19 cases, among them just one domestic infection.
VENTILATOR PRODUCTION
Ford Motor Co. and General
Electric Co. announced a partnership in a conference call on Monday to build a simplified version of an existing ventilator, and that they can produce about 50,000 ventilators in 100 days starting April 20. The companies would ramp up production to meet a target of 30,000 ventilators a month after that, they said.
Still, Ford said in a news release that it expects to produce 1,500 ventilators by the end of April, after the point when health experts say the surge in U.S. hospitals will be greatest, and well below estimates of what will be needed during that surge. Ford said it expects to have produced 50,000 by July.
General Motors is embarking on a similar effort to build ventilators with partner Ventec Life Systems. The company is turning to its supply chain and retooling GM’s Kokomo, Ind., plant, company officials said Monday, and plans to involve about 1,000 workers in its push to begin shipping ventilators by the end of April.
Ford and GE said they are producing an FDA-approved ventilator patented by Airon, a medical device company. The companies expect to put out 7,200 ventilators a week at full production, assisted by 500 United Auto Workers-represented employees.
Trump has invoked the Defense Production Act to compel General Motors to produce ventilators, and separately ordered GM and Ford to move as fast as possible to produce ventilators, according to a tweet last week.
On Sunday, the Health and Human Services Department accepted 30 million doses of hydroxychloroquine — a drug Trump backed as a possible “game changer” in the fight against the coronavirus — from Novartis AG’s Sandoz unit, Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement.
Normally used to treat malaria, hydroxychloroquine yielded promising yet inconclusive results in a small coronavirus trial. While Trump has said the drug is safe, it does carry significant side effects. Some people have been sickened, with reported deaths in the U.S. and France, after taking various versions to try to ward off the new illness.
Trump said 1,100 patients in New York City are getting treatment using hydroxychloroquine. As global cases surged past 700,000, the city has emerged as one of the pandemic’s hot spots.
“Let’s see how it works,” Trump said in his daily briefing Sunday. “It may, it may not.” Information for this article was contributed by Jocelyn Noveck, Larry Neumeister, Marina Villeneuve, Zeke Miller, Jill Colvin, Alan Suderman, Rachel La Corte, Darlene Superville and staff members of The Associated Press; by Jonathan Martin, Maggie Haberman and Mike Baker of The New York Times; by Faiz Siddiqui, Reed Albergotti and Aaron Gregg of The Washington Post; and by John Lauerman of Bloomberg News