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Coronavirus Live Updates: Trump Declares Emergency as Pelosi Announces Deal on Relief Bill
Stocks rose as President Trump said he was making $50 billion in emergency funding available, lifting restrictions on doctors and hospitals and waiving interest on student loans.
Right Now
Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Democratic lawmakers she had reached an agreement with the Trump administration on a coronavirus relief package. The House plans to pass it tonight.
Here’s what you need to know:
- Trump declares a national emergency, “two very big words.”
- Nancy Pelosi says she reached a deal with the White House on a sweeping relief package.
- Wall Street rebounds during Trump’s address.
- After missteps, the Trump administration refocuses on testing.
- World leaders are affected as the virus causes political and social disruption worldwide.
- Spain declares a state of emergency and orders its first mandatory lockdowns.
- Los Angeles schools will be closed starting Monday, but New York is resisting calls to follow suit.
transcript
‘Two Very Big Words’: Trump Announces National Emergency for Coronavirus
President Trump held a news conference to declare a national emergency in order to free up to $50 billion in federal funds to combat the spread of coronavirus.
“To unleash the full power of the federal government, in this effort today I am officially declaring a national emergency. Two very big words. The action I am taking will open up access to up to $50 billion of very importantly, very important, and a large amount of money for states and territories and localities, in our shared fight against this disease. We’ll remove or eliminate every obstacle necessary to deliver our people the care that they need, and that they’re entitled to — no resource will be spared, nothing whatsoever.” Reporter: “Dr. Fauci said earlier this week that the lag in testing was, in fact, a failing. Do you take responsibility for that? And when can you guarantee that every single American who needs a test will be able to have a test? What’s the date of that?” “Yeah, no, I don’t take responsibility at all because we were given a set of circumstances. And we were given rules, regulations and specifications from a different time. It wasn’t meant for this kind of an event.”
Trump declares a national emergency, “two very big words.”
President Trump on Friday afternoon officially declared a national emergency that he said would give states and territories access to up to $50 billion in federal funds to combat the spreading coronavirus epidemic.
In a live address in the White House Rose Garden, he also gave broad new authority to the health secretary, Alex Azar, who he said would now be able to waive regulations, giving doctors and hospitals more flexibility to respond to the virus, including making it easier to treat people remotely.
Cases in the U.S. have climbed to more than 2,030, even with sparse testing, and the death toll has risen to more than 45. The United States is facing the prospect that those numbers could grow exponentially, as they did in China, Italy, South Korea and other countries.
“I am officially declaring a national emergency, two very big words,” he said.
“I’m urging every state to set up emergency operations centers effective immediately,” he added.
Mr. Trump said he was waiving interest on student loans, and that with oil prices low, the government would buy large quantities of crude oil for the nation’s strategic reserve.
His comments marked the first time he has addressed the coronavirus as a problem within the country’s borders, not just something that needed to be kept out with travel restrictions. But the optics of the address offered a contrast to the social distancing that many experts recommend: Mr. Trump and the top advisers he invited to speak crowded together around the lectern and shared a microphone.
Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence both lauded the administration’s efforts, and the president particularly praised his own measures to keep the virus from entering the country. However, some Americans returning from coronavirus hot spots say they are not being screened for symptoms.
Mr. Trump, who has been accused of downplaying the crisis, detailed the administration’s efforts to speed testing, which was announced earlier on Friday. He said that millions of virus testing kits would become available, but added that he did not think so many would be needed.
“We don’t want everybody taking this test,” he said. “It’s totally unnecessary.”
“This will pass, this will pass through, and we will be even stronger for it,” the president said.
Asked if he would be tested for the coronavirus because of his contact at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, with an infected Brazilian official, he said, “most likely, yeah,” countering earlier White House statements that he would not be tested.
“I think I will do it anyway. Fairly soon,” he said.
Even as he spoke, news emerged that a second person who was at Mar-a-Lago had been found to have the coronavirus.
In an email on Friday, the Trump Victory committee said that one of roughly 1,000 donors who attended a fundraising event with Mr. Trump at the estate last Sunday had tested positive. A Republican National Committee official said the donor never came in contact with the president.
Nancy Pelosi says she reached a deal with the White House on a sweeping relief package.
Congress and the White House struck a deal on Friday on a sweeping coronavirus package to assist people impacted by the outbreak of the coronavirus, moving to confront a growing pandemic that has upended lives and wreaked havoc on financial markets.
The House was set to vote on the plan on Friday evening, after a roller-coaster day of negotiations that threatened to veer off track as President Trump criticized the plan during a Rose Garden news conference.
Instead, by dusk, Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote to House Democrats saying, “We are proud to have reached an agreement with the administration to resolve outstanding challenges.”
The measure includes two weeks of paid sick leave and up to three months of paid family and medical leave, enhanced unemployment benefits, free virus testing including for those who lack insurance, additional food aid and federal funds for Medicaid.
The deal is a product of an intense round of talks that unfolded between Ms. Pelosi and Steven Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, as financial markets swung wildly amid uncertainty about the spiraling crisis.
Wall Street rebounds during Trump’s address.
Stocks rallied on Friday, rebounding from their worst day in more than 30 years after Mr. Trump said leaders of private U.S. companies had agreed to help with efforts to test for the coronavirus and declared a national emergency that would free billions in funding for states and territories.
The S&P 500 rose more than 9 percent on Friday, with most of the gains coming as government officials and business executives spoke at a news conference at the White House.
Mr. Trump said the administration was working with Google to develop a website to determine whether an individual needs a test — a move aimed at avoiding overwhelming the health system with people who are ill but do not necessarily need to be tested for coronavirus.
The chief executives of Walmart, Target and Walgreens all said they had agreed to make facilities available for testing.
Financial markets have been nothing if not inconsistent for the past three weeks, plunging and then rising, and then plunging again, as each day brought new measures to contain the outbreak and new worries that the economy, workers and businesses would take a hit as a result of them.
After missteps, the Trump administration refocuses on testing.
The Trump administration moved on Friday to drastically speed up coronavirus testing, rushing to catch up with surging demand for tests.
The government gave the Swiss health care giant Roche emergency permission to sell its three-and-a-half hour test to U.S. labs, and said it was awarding over a million dollars to two companies to accelerate development of one-hour tests.
Testing has lagged in the country, infuriating the public, local leaders and members of Congress. Sick people across the country say they are being denied tests. Administration officials have promised repeatedly that enormous numbers of tests would soon be available, only to have the reality fall far short.
“I don’t take responsibility at all,” President Trump said in response to a reporter’s question on Friday, “because we were given a set of circumstances and we were given rules regulations and specifications from a different time.”
While South Korea is testing 10,000 people a day, overall U.S. state and federal testing has yet to log even 15,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi highlighted the urgency on Friday, while discussing an emergency spending package she said the House would pass later in the day, saying, “The three most important parts of this bill are testing, testing, testing.”
The Department of Health and Human Services on Friday assigned an assistant secretary, Adm. Brett P. Giroir, to oversee testing efforts. A day earlier, in a congressional hearing, top health officials were unable to say who was in charge of making sure that people who needed tests got them.
One of them, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, finally responded: “The system does not, is not really geared to what we need right now, what you are asking for. That is a failing. It is a failing, let’s admit it.”
“The idea of anybody getting it, easily, the way people in other countries are doing it, we are not set up for that,” Dr. Fauci added. “Do I think we should be? Yes. But we are not.”
On Friday, the federal government said that it would allow New York State’s public health department to authorize local labs to perform coronavirus tests.
By next week, New York could be conducting 6,000 tests a day, the governor said. On Friday, the state opened a “drive through” testing facility in New Rochelle, a city north of New York City that has been at the center of the state’s epidemic.
World leaders are affected as the virus causes political and social disruption worldwide.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada is self-isolating after his wife tested positive, and Canada’s Parliament went into recess.
A top adviser to Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, tested positive days after he, Mr. Bolsonaro and other Brazilian officials met with Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago, raising fears that both presidents might have been exposed. Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami, who also met the Brazilian delegation, said on Friday that he tested positive.
The Australian minister for home affairs, Peter Dutton, tested positive on Friday, days after meeting with Attorney General William P. Barr and Ivanka Trump.
In Iran, the virus has felled members of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s inner circle.
The reach of the virus into the world’s highest political reaches is a stark reminder — if one is needed — that the pathogen knows no boundaries.
Mr. Bolsonaro said on Friday that he had tested negative, though people in the early stages of infection often do. Mr. Barr stayed home on Friday as a precautionary measure, but was not tested, a spokeswoman said.
Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, said on Friday he would extend his self-quarantine to March 17 after learning he had come into contact with a second individual who has tested positive, though he still had no symptoms. Two other Republican senators, Rick Scott of Florida and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have also preemptively isolated themselves after exposure to others.
The epidemic also touched on the lives of ordinary people who are, for the most part, still in good health, as an avalanche of cancellations and closings gathered speed.
In the United States, Broadway has gone dark and Disney parks are shutting their doors for the first time since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In Paris, the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower have closed until further notice.
“My guess is there are thousands and thousands of cases walking around the state of New York,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Friday, underscoring that the official count of 421 cases, even as it inches up, is not representative of total spread of the virus in the state.
Nearly every sport has been affected; the Boston Marathon and the Masters golf tournament were called off on Friday.
Spain declares a state of emergency and orders its first mandatory lockdowns.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain said on Friday that the country would be placed under a state of emergency for 15 days, which could allow his government to restrict the movement of citizens, ration goods and impose other measures to fight the spread of the new coronavirus.
The decision came as Spain’s caseload rose to about 4,200 cases, the most in Europe after Italy’s more than 17,600. The Spanish death toll reached 120 on Friday.
European caseloads overall jumped to more than 35,000 on Friday, nearly double the number three days earlier. France’s case count rose by 800, reaching more than 3,600. Germany’s rose by a similar number to more than 3,100.
Earlier Friday, Spain ordered its first mandatory lockdowns, of four towns in Catalonia, with about 70,000 people.
In a brief televised address, Mr. Sánchez said that the state of emergency would come into force on Saturday, after a ministerial meeting, and that it was designed to use “all the resources of the state to protect better the citizens, especially those who are most vulnerable to the virus.”
Mr. Sánchez said that Spain and other European countries were “only in the first phase of the fight against the virus.” He warned that Spain could reach 10,000 cases in coming weeks.
But Mr. Sánchez did not specify what kinds of measure would be imposed under a state of emergency. “We will take weeks,” he said. “It will be very hard and difficult, but we will overcome the virus, that’s certain.” The government has already closed museums and sports centers, and students nationwide were sent home from school this week.
The coronavirus has spread at an alarming rate in Spain over the past week, with the Madrid region becoming the center of the health crisis and two of Mr. Sánchez’s ministers testing positive for the virus.
Under the Spanish Constitution, the government can maintain a nationwide state of emergency for 15 days. The law also allows the government to requisition factories and other infrastructure. Parliament must approve an extension.
The only other time that Spain declared a state of emergency was in 2010, when the government ordered the military to break up a wildcat strike by air traffic controllers that brought to air traffic to a standstill.
Los Angeles schools will be closed starting Monday, but New York is resisting calls to follow suit.
Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York said on Friday that public schools would remain open, even as three more schools closed for the day after coronavirus cases were reported there.
“There are three pillars to protecting this city and the long-term health and safety of our people: Our schools, our mass transit and our health care system,” Mr. de Blasio said. “Those three are interrelated deeply. You take one out of the equation and it affects the others. My goal is to keep all three of those going.”
New York is the country’s largest school system, with 1.1 million students, about 114,000 of them homeless. Closings could have a severe effect on parents who will need to find child care, and on the many students who depend on the cafeteria for food and the school for shelter.
The Los Angeles and San Diego school districts said they were canceling school beginning on Monday, affecting more than 750,000 students in Southern California.
The Los Angeles public school district is the second-largest in the United States, with 670,000 students. The decision is the latest in a slew of similar moves across the country affecting more than six million students.
All public schools, and many if not all private schools, in Virginia, Oregon, Ohio, Michigan, Maryland, Kentucky and New Mexico were told to close beginning next week, and the governor of Washington State ordered all schools shut in three counties near Seattle. The Houston Independent School District, the largest school district in Texas, also said it was closing for two weeks.
In Los Angeles, about 80 percent of students qualify for free or reduced lunches, and just under 20,000 are homeless at some point during the school year. The district is also the second-largest employer in California’s largest county.
American officials are considering escalating containment measures.
In Washington State, where more than 30 people have died from the virus, more than anywhere else in the country, public health officials have escalated through most of a 13-step strategy checklist for controlling infectious outbreaks and now have only a few remaining options: closing workplaces, restricting people to their homes and cordoning off targeted areas to help control the spread of infection, measures that have already been put in place in other parts of the world.
transcript
Fear, Humor, Defiance: How the World Is Reacting to Coronavirus
The coronavirus has touched a diverse collection of countries and cultures, but a number of shared experiences have emerged — from grieving the dead to writing songs.
[Bagpipe music] There are moments that seem bizarre, moments of fear … … preparation and moments of emptiness. These are scenes from the world living with coronavirus. It has spread across cultures, languages and even out to sea. And despite these global differences, a number of shared experiences have emerged. There is grief over the dead. In Iran, hospital staff mourn a doctor’s death from the virus. In China, a quarantined building collapses, and a firefighter breaks down after pulling bodies from the rubble. In Italy, a man mourns the death of his sister. To try and save lives, authorities take precautions. They disinfect public areas and screen populations. “This is just crazy. Around the world, people are afraid and on edge. “Unbelievable.” In Northern Ireland, routine construction work at an Apple Store is mistaken for virus-related activity. In Japan, tempers flare when a man sneezes on a train. One Italian takes the fear and adds humor. This is a circle to keep people at a safe distance. In fact, lots of people use humor to cope with the uncertainty or the stigma of being sick. In Australia, a run on toilet paper leads to lessons in self-defense. “He’s going to show you how to deal with people stealing your toilet paper.” There is also defiance, a conviction that life must go on despite the virus. Across rooftops in China, quarantined neighbors socialize. From a rooftop in Italy, a theater group performs poetry for an area where movement is restricted. On a quarantined cruise ship, there’s songwriting to pass the time. In an apartment in China, too. But perhaps some of the most striking moments from the pandemic are those where little happens: the empty streets. “Unbelievable. No traffic.” The quiet airports. The places of worship without worshippers. Stores without goods. This is how it is across the globe as we prepare, grieve and wait for the next chapter of the coronavirus.
Political leaders are considering their options, alarmed over research that suggests 400 people in the Seattle area could die in the coming weeks if the trajectory of the outbreak cannot be altered. The research shows that if policymakers could reduce the transmission rate by 75 percent — primarily through what is known as “social distancing” — then the number of deaths could be reduced to only about 30 in that period.
One official said that none of the options were off the table, but that officials were mindful of the tremendous burden that such restrictions could impose on families and businesses.
Gyms, apartment buildings and offices: How to manage the outbreak.
Today, we look at how the places you interact with daily are ensuring they stay safe while still being able to function, including how gyms should be disinfecting their equipment, new guidance for building managers, and how needed changes may affect workers.
Iran’s military is called on to fight one of the world’s worst outbreaks.
Iran’s supreme leader has ordered the military to take charge of fighting the coronavirus epidemic, citing what he called the possibility that the scourge was a “biological attack” and the potential need for “biological defense.”
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s written order on Thursday called on the armed forces to create a military base for health care and preventive measures to stop the spread of the disease in Iran, which has one of the world’s worst outbreaks.
Satellite photos appear to show the digging of mass graves in Qom, the holy city where the outbreak began.
President Hassan Rouhani’s government has struggled to contain the spread and has been heavily criticized for its management of the crisis, which has been cloaked in secrecy. The mobilization of the military by Mr. Khamenei, who commands the armed forces, amounts to an admission that the response has been inadequate.
Iran’s government reported on Thursday that the new virus had infected 10,750 people and killed 429. But a tally of deaths reported by local governors and health officials in 30 provinces places the number of fatalities closer to 800 people, according to a report by BBC Persian.
At least 30 officials, including vice presidents, cabinet ministers and Parliament members, have been infected, including members of Mr. Khamenei’s inner circle. The supreme leader’s chief foreign policy adviser and his chief accountant have both tested positive, Iranian state media have reported.
Iran’s economy, already strained under U.S. economic sanctions, has taken a further hit from the epidemic. Iran has asked the International Monetary Fund for a $5 billion emergency loan — the first time since 1962 that Iran has sought such assistance.
Louisiana will postpone its April 4 primary, becoming the first state to do so.
Louisiana will postpone its April 4th primary election for two months, becoming the first state in the nation to adjust its elections in response to the coronavirus outbreak.
“Today I have certified that a state of emergency exists and requested that the governor issue an executive order postponing the elections this spring,” the secretary of state, R. Kyle Ardoin, said at a news conference. He referenced the state’s decision to postpone elections after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 as precedent.
Concern for public health, and particularly the health of poll workers whom Mr. Ardoin noted are mostly senior citizens, led officials to decide on postponing the primary.
The presidential primary will now be held on June 20, and municipal elections until July 25.
A Chinese official promotes a conspiracy theory that the U.S. introduced the virus to China.
China is pushing a new theory about the origins of the coronavirus: It is an American disease that might have been introduced by members of the United States Army who visited Wuhan in October.
There is not a shred of evidence to support that, but the notion received an official endorsement from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, whose spokesman accused American officials of not coming clean about what they know about the disease.
China, under diplomatic pressure for the early missteps in handling the outbreak, has sought to deflect attention from those failings at home and abroad and now turned to a well-worn practice of blaming internal problems on foreign actors.
“The conspiracy theories are a new, low front in what they clearly perceive as a global competition over the narrative of this crisis,” Julian B. Gewirtz, a scholar at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard, said of the Chinese.
In the United States, a number of politicians and media personalities have promoted comparably preposterous conspiracy theories.
Speaking on Fox News, Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, raised the possibility that the virus was manufactured by the Chinese government in a high-security biochemical lab in Wuhan. Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist, and Rush Limbaugh, a conservative radio talk show host, have also pushed this theory, which has been dismissed by scientists.
China said on Friday there had been eight new officially confirmed infections from the virus in the past 24 hours, and seven deaths from it. It was its lowest official tally since the country imposed emergency measures in January.
Reporting was contributed by Ian Austen, Ernesto Londoño, Melissa Eddy, Aurelien Breeden, Constant Méheut, Elisabetta Povoledo, Ivan Nechepurenko, Davey Alba, Raphael Minder, Karen Zraick, Andy Newman, Steven Erlanger, Marc Santora, Megan Specia, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, Steven Lee Myers, Andrew Higgins, Damien Cave, Farah Stockman, Hannah Beech, Heather Murphy, Gillian Wong, Jorge Arangure, Bhadra Sharma, Emily Cochrane, Jeanna Smialek, Jim Tankersley, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Nick Corasaniti, Mike Baker, Miriam Jordan, Jason Horowitz, Peter Baker, Maggie Haberman, Annie Karni, Katie Benner, Sarah Mervosh, Patricia Mazzei, Neil Vigdor and Rick Gladstone.
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