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Coronavirus Live Updates: Nations Pledge Trillions to Stave Off Economic Catastrophe
The U.S. is closing the border with Canada by mutual consent, President Trump announced. The virus has now infected more than 200,000 people in at least 144 countries.
Right Now
The U.S. Senate plans to vote Wednesday on a relief package.
Here’s what you need to know:
- Senate plans to vote on relief package on Wednesday as Trump tweets reassurances.
- U.S. and Canada agree to close off border to nonessential traffic.
- World leaders vow vast spending, and New Yorkers face prospect of “shelter in place.”
- Wall Street plunges amid global market turmoil.
- Virus disrupts U.S. troop withdrawal in Afghanistan.
- America’s hospitals are dangerously low on ventilators.
Senate plans to vote on relief package on Wednesday as Trump tweets reassurances.
The Senate on Wednesday plans to take up the coronavirus relief package approved by the House last week, which would provide paid leave, enhanced unemployment benefits, free coronavirus testing and food and health care aid.
While some conservatives said they were unhappy with the bill, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, counseled his members on Tuesday to “gag and vote for it anyway.”
“This is a time for urgent bipartisan action, and in this case, I do not believe we should let perfection be the enemy of something that will help even a subset of workers,” Mr. McConnell said on the Senate floor Wednesday morning, adding that he would vote for the legislation.
Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, is also pushing for a vote on an amendment that would pay for the new spending, in part by ending American military involvement in Afghanistan, according to a spokesman.
Mr. Paul, who frequently tries and fails to win amendments to offset the cost of new spending bills, is expected to fall short in this effort as well.
Senators were planning to spend Wednesday negotiating privately on the elements of a much broader package, expected to total $1 trillion, to stabilize the economy and head off a deep recession, including by sending direct government payments to millions of Americans within the next few weeks.
As the effects of the coronavirus pandemic hit the job market, the damage is likely to be much deeper and longer lasting than seemed possible even a week ago.
President Trump took to Twitter on Wednesday morning to offer reassurance.
“For the people that are now out of work because of the important and necessary containment policies, for instance the shutting down of hotels, bars and restaurants, money will soon be coming to you,” he posted.
“I will totally protect your Medicare & Social Security!” Mr. Trump also wrote.
U.S. and Canada agree to close off border to nonessential traffic.
In a further attempt to slow the spread of the virus in America, where it has now claimed more than 100 lives, Mr. Trump announced on Wednesday that the border with Canada was being closed to all but essential traffic.
Canada had already closed its borders to most foreigners — but not Americans — in an attempt to keep the virus at bay.
The move on Wednesday would allow trade to continue, but would restrict flights and border crossings for things like vacations.
Mr. Trump had warned in recent days that closing the northern border was on the table.
In a news conference this week, he discouraged discretionary travel and said that, “we have very strong emergency powers when it comes to something like this, both on the southern and the northern borders.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump said that trade would not be impacted should the borders close. “We just signed our deal — the U.S.M.C.A. — and the relationship is very strong,” he told reporters at the White House.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada said that the agreement to close the border had followed several days of talks including a conversation with President Trump on Wednesday morning.
He said that the measure would ban travel for “recreation and tourism” but would continue to allow the crossing of trucks and trains carrying goods like food, fuel and parts for manufacturers.
“Our governments recognize that it is critical we ensure supply chains,” Mr. Trudeau told a news conference. Canadians and Americans who commute daily to each other’s countries, a category that includes many health care workers, will be allowed to continue to cross, Mr. Trudeau added.
The Trump administration has also looked to tighten the southern border and plans to turn back all asylum seekers and other foreigners attempting to enter the United States from Mexico illegally.
Officials said ports of entry would remain open to American citizens, green-card holders and foreigners with proper documentation. But under the new rule, border patrol agents would immediately return to Mexico — without any detainment and without any due process — anyone who attempted to cross the southern border illegally.
World leaders vow vast spending, and New Yorkers face prospect of “shelter in place.”
Nations around the world waged a two-front war on Wednesday: fighting the spread of the virus through ever tightening restrictions on people’s movements and trying to stabilize economies severely damaged by those efforts.
The White House is seeking more than one trillion dollars to blunt the financial fallout from the sudden and drastic changes to daily life caused by the coronavirus.
Germany has promised $600 billion to help businesses and individuals. British leaders said they would throw more than $420 billion at the crisis. The European Union promised hundreds of billions to support member states. Leaders in France, Spain, Italy and dozens of other nations have pledged to spend whatever is needed to meet the moment.
To put that in context — and to give a sense of the scale of the current crisis — the United States appropriated about $200 billion in today’s money for the Marshall Plan to help rebuild Europe after World War II.
But even as governments and central banks around the world promised to use all the fiscal and monetary policy instruments in their arsenal to prevent an economic collapse, the ripple effects of closing borders, locking down entire nations and telling people to stay in their homes continued to swell.
On Wednesday morning, President Trump announced on Twitter that the border with Canada was being closed to all but essential traffic. Despite the ever-tightening restrictions, the virus continued its global rampage. More than 200,000 people have now been infected and at least 8,200 killed — more than half outside China.
Wall Street, rocked by wild swings, was off to a rough start on Wednesday after global markets fell sharply.
Around the world, cities expressed growing concern about funding for vital services after revenue disappeared virtually overnight.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs New York City’s subways and two commuter railroads, said it desperately needed $4 billion from the federal government.
With new infections continuing to rise in the city, Mayor Bill de Blasio said 8.6 million residents could be told to “shelter in place” within the next 48 hours. However, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo pushed back against that idea.
The term “shelter in place” has previously been associated with hurricanes and snowstorms — events of limited duration where people could be confident that, after a period of hardship, life would generally get back to normal.
But “social distancing” is the new normal for the foreseeable future, increasingly enforced by law.
It was unclear what a “shelter in place” order would look like in New York.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, where restrictions were expanded late Tuesday to include more than eight million people, downtown streets were deserted, but there were many reports of people still going to parks and socializing.
In Italy, where the death toll climbed to more than 2,500, the lockdown has been much more stringent, with people only venturing out for essential supplies. France and Spain have also tightened restrictions on nationwide lockdowns, adding hefty fines for anybody who violates the rules.
Wall Street plunges amid global market turmoil.
Stocks tumbled on Wednesday, as the coronavirus continued its relentless spread, governments ramped up efforts to contain it and investors waited for lawmakers in Washington to take action on proposals to bolster the American economy.
S&P 500 futures fell more than 5 percent. Major European markets were 4 to 5 percent lower, following a late-day slump in Asian shares.
The significant drops represented another swing in sentiment on Wall Street. Stocks jumped on Tuesday as the White House called for urgent action to pump $1 trillion into the economy. But the calls so far have not been met with tangible action in the Senate. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin met with Republican lawmakers on Tuesday and warned them that the unemployment rate in the United States could approach 20 percent without the intervention of robust economic stimulus measures.
But the renewed selling on Wednesday showed how fragile any gains have become as long as the virus continues to spread and the number of cases grows at a staggering rate.
“We remain of the view that equity prices are only likely to find a floor once evidence emerges that the measures to contain the virus are proving successful,” analysts at Capital Economics wrote in a note Tuesday. “That is what happened in China, where equities had started to recover after their sharp falls in January, before the virus spread rapidly elsewhere.”
Virus disrupts U.S. troop withdrawal in Afghanistan.
The American commander in Afghanistan is stopping most U.S. and allied troops from entering and leaving the country for the next month, American and European officials said. The planning reflects growing concerns about the spread of the coronavirus there in recent days.
The decision of the commander, Gen. Austin S. Miller, may complicate the drawdown of troops ordered by President Trump after the United States recently signed a peace agreement with the Taliban.
There are roughly 12,000 American troops in Afghanistan. Under the agreement signed by the Taliban and American diplomats last month, that number is set to decrease to 8,600 within the next 100 or so days. NATO and coalition forces, with roughly 8,700 troops in the country, were set to draw down a commensurate amount.
America’s hospitals are dangerously low on ventilators.
As the United States braces for an onslaught of coronavirus cases, hospitals and governments are confronting a grim reality: There are not nearly enough lifesaving ventilator machines to go around, and there is no way to solve the problem before the disease reaches full throttle.
Desperate hospitals say they can find nowhere to buy the medical devices, which help patients breathe and can be the difference between life and death for those facing the most dire respiratory effects of the coronavirus.
American and European manufacturers say they cannot speed up production enough to meet soaring demand, at least not anytime soon.
The United States has been slow to develop a national strategy for accelerating the production of ventilators. That appears to reflect in part the federal government’s sluggish reaction to the coronavirus, with President Trump and others initially playing down the threat. This week, Mr. Trump urged governors to find ways to procure new ventilators. “Try getting it yourselves,” he said.
That will be hard and in some cases impossible.
“The reality is there is absolutely not enough,” said Andreas Wieland, the chief executive of Hamilton Medical in Switzerland, one of the world’s largest makers of ventilators. “We see that in Italy, we saw that in China, we see it in France and other countries. We could sell I don’t know how many.”
At least 100 deaths in the United States have now been linked to the coronavirus, according to a New York Times database that is tracking and mapping every known case in the country as more people are tested. On Tuesday evening, West Virginia became the 50th state to report an infection.
The 101 deaths, all announced in the last three weeks, came as the number of known coronavirus cases in the United States soared past 5,600 on Tuesday. Hundreds more are learning they have the illness each day, including more than 800 diagnoses on both Monday and Tuesday, as the nation’s testing capacity has grown significantly and as the virus spreads.
About half the country’s reported deaths have been in Washington State, including at least 30 linked to a long-term care facility in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland. Most of those who have died from the virus have been in their 60s or older, and several have been in their 90s. But other patients who died have been younger, including a corrections worker in New York City in his 50s and a man from the Seattle area in his 40s.
Belgium goes on total lockdown, and European officials warn against flouting rules.
Belgium joined the list of European nations to impose strict restrictions on Wednesday, effective at noon, as the virus rampaged across the continent.
The president of the German center for disease control and prevention, Prof. Lothar H. Wieler, warned that if people did not follow public health guidance, Germany could have 10 million cases in just a few months.
“The epidemic is taking an exponential course,” he told reporters in Berlin on Wednesday.
There are 8,200 cases in Germany, a rise of 1,000 in the last 24 hours.
In France, the military started operations to evacuate patients from the hard-hit eastern part the country.
An air force transport plane left from southern France on Wednesday morning for Mulhouse, in the eastern Alsace region, to evacuate six Covid-19 patients to military hospitals in Marseille and Toulon.
A military field hospital is also expected to be deployed near Mulhouse.
The French health minister, Olivier Véran, announced on Wednesday that the authorities would shut down open-air markets where people were not complying with distancing guidelines, even though grocery stores and other food purveyors were not affected by the lockdown.
“Wherever it is impossible to enforce the distance of one meter between two people, we must intervene,” Mr. Véran said.
In Belgium, people are allowed to go outside to walk, bike or exercise, but those activities must be done alone or with the people with whom they live.
The new rules are similar to those instituted in France, but they are not as strict as those in Italy. Nor are Belgians required, as they are in France and Italy, to download and complete “permission forms” to carry with them offering an explanation for why they are not in their homes.
Transportation is disrupted across the U.S., including a walkout of bus drivers in Detroit.
As the number of coronavirus cases increases, the impact is being felt across every facet of American life, including transportation.
After three technicians who work in an air traffic control tower at Midway International Airport in Chicago tested positive for the virus on Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration temporarily shut it down, causing scores of flights to be canceled, delayed or diverted.
Public transit agencies in many cities have struggled amid low ridership and health concerns from their employees and customers. New York City’s public transportation system, the largest in North America, is seeking a $4 billion federal bailout after the pandemic set off an extraordinary fall in ridership.
In Detroit, bus service was halted after drivers, fearing for their safety, balked at leaving their garages. The president of the union which represents the drivers said that some had reported to work in the morning and found that buses had not been adequately cleaned.
Uber and Lyft, two of the most popular ride-sharing companies, said on Tuesday that they were suspending pooled trips, in which riders pay a reduced fee by sharing the ride with a passenger headed in the same direction.
Gov. Wanda Vázquez of Puerto Rico asked the Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday for permission to suspend international and domestic travel to the island, which has already gone on lockdown and imposed a curfew.
Europe resurrects borders, and chaos follows.
Hastily reintroduced border checkpoints have prompted chaos across Europe as nations step up entry restrictions and limit movement.
The European Union announced a decision on Tuesday to implement a 30-day restriction on nonessential travel to its territory, and at least 12 countries have re-erected border checkpoints, stemming the flow of people and goods.
Romanian and Bulgarian citizens trying to return home from Austria via Hungary were denied entry to Hungary on Tuesday, a day after Prime Minister Viktor Orban announced that his country would close its borders to non-Hungarians.
Europe Closes Its Borders
The European Union announced a 30-day restriction on non-essential travel to its territory, though movement within the bloc will be still be allowed.
Countries participating in travel ban
100 coronavirus cases
1,000 cases
Britain, no longer a member of the EU, will not participate in the travel restrictions.
Ireland shares a common
travel area with Britain
and will not participate.
It is still in the EU.
Countries participating
in travel ban
Britain, no longer a member
of the EU, will not participate
in the travel ban.
100 coronavirus cases
1,000 cases
Ireland shares a
common travel
area with Britain
and will not partic-
ipate. It is still in
the EU.
Countries participating in travel ban
100 coronavirus cases
1,000 cases
Britain, no
longer a member
of the EU, will
not participate in
the travel ban.
Ireland shares a
common travel area
with Britain and will
not participate. It is
still in the EU.
Some travelers staged a protest on the highway, causing a traffic jam stretching some 13 miles. The authorities later announced that they would allow a one-time passage of Romanians and Bulgarians through Hungary through a “humanitarian corridor.”
Poland, which suspended all international air and rail travel and barred entry on Sunday to everyone except Polish citizens and legal residents, was also scrambling to manage the chaos.
Thousands of travelers on Wednesday were stuck in lines stretching dozens of miles near entry points to Poland, with many forced to wait up to 30 hours without access to food or water. According to officials, the waiting time for thousands of truckers, especially on the Poland-Belarus border, could be even longer, delaying the transport of goods into Poland.
Responding to the crisis, the Polish Ministry of the Interior said on Tuesday night that more checkpoints would be opened and that about 1,000 soldiers would be dispatched to help maintain peace at the borders.
Social distancing doesn’t have to mean isolation. Let us help.
The regulations around social distancing have forced many friends and family to change the way they communicate and spend time together. It is important to stay connected during these stressful times. Here are some ideas that may help:
Pakistan, its health care system already teetering, braces for coronavirus.
Pakistan’s health care system is already on the brink of collapse. The virus may push it over the edge.
The country is at the center of one of the most densely populated regions in the world, South Asia, which has some 1.8 billion people and porous borders.
Around 246 people have tested positive for the coronavirus in Pakistan, and many public health experts say they are worried that the true numbers are much higher.
As the outbreak hit neighboring Iran, thousands of Pakistanis tried to return home. Some 4,600 were quarantined at Taftan, Pakistan, a town on the border. They spent 14 days in tents, with little running water and barely working toilets.
Many of those who were released from quarantine returned home and tested positive for the virus. In Sindh Province, the number of infected jumped from 35 to 150 on Sunday, after dozens of people who underwent quarantine in Taftan were confirmed as having contracted the illness.
Many in Pakistan say they are having trouble getting tested. So far, around eight people per million have been tested in the country, compared to about 1,000 per million in Italy.
In a televised address on Tuesday night, Prime Minister Imran Khan warned that hospitals were too weak to accept an influx of people seeking testing and asked only the very ill to get screened.
He urged social distancing but said that the nation’s economy was too weak to handle a complete shutdown.
“Pakistan’s situation is not the same as that of the United States or Europe,” Mr. Khan said. “There is poverty in our country, with 25 percent of the people living in extreme poverty.”
Pope encourages those in lockdown to show love.
Pope Francis encouraged those under the severe restrictions in place across Italy and the broader world to use the “difficult days” to show others that they care, using “small, concrete gestures.”
“A caress for our grandparents, a kiss for our children, for the people we love” are “important, decisive gestures,” Francis said in an interview with the Rome daily La Repubblica on Wednesday. “If we live these days like this, they won’t be wasted.”
The coronavirus is ravaging Italy, with 2,503 deaths reported as of Tuesday and more than 31,000 cases across the country. The health care system as been overwhelmed, and daily life has been brought to a halt, with residents confined to their homes except to buy food, medicine or other necessities.
The pope has continued to conduct Mass, but in a very different setting. On Sunday, he spoke to Catholics from the library of the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican at midday, a change from his usual place of delivery, the window of the papal apartment overlooking Saint Peter’s Square, which is closed.
In the newspaper interview, Francis thanked those on the front lines of the epidemic. “They are an example of this concreteness,” he said. And he urged people to reach out to those who had lost loved ones.
Gestures of affection are often “lost in the anonymity of everyday life” and in our dependence on virtual communication, he said. But, he added, actions like “a hot meal, a caress, a hug, a phone call” make “life meaningful.”
On Sunday, the pope went to two Rome churches to pray. “I asked the Lord to stop the epidemic,” he said.
Taliban get into coronavirus control, cracking down on returnees from Iran.
The Taliban, which control large parts of Afghanistan, have started requiring Afghans traveling from Iran, where the coronavirus is running rampant, to prove that they have been screened before being allowed to return to their homes in areas controlled by the insurgent group.
Proof of screening is being provided by the Afghan-Japan Communicable Disease Hospital in Kabul, a medical center in the capital that is operated by the Afghan government, which the Taliban considers illegitimate.
Thousands of Afghans return daily from Iran via Herat, a city in western Afghanistan, then take buses or taxis to Kabul.
“Such action is necessary because you know this virus is spreading to several provinces,” a Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said in a phone interview about the screening requirement.
Mr. Mujahid said Afghans who had returned from Iran “should have their medical examinations so that we are certain they don’t infect others.”
The Afghan Health Ministry has reported 22 cases of coronavirus. But health officials worry there may be many more infection’s because so few people have been tested.
The virus could survive in the air, a new study suggests.
The coronavirus can live for three days on some surfaces, like plastic and steel — though the amount of viable virus decreases sharply over this time — suggests a new study, published on Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Experts say the risk of consumers getting infected from touching those materials is still low, though they offered additional warnings about how long the virus could survive in the air, which may have important implications for medical workers.
When the virus becomes suspended in droplets smaller than five micrometers — known as aerosols — it can stay suspended for about 30 minutes, before drifting down and settling on surfaces where it can linger for hours, the researchers said. The finding is inconsistent with the World Health Organization’s position that the virus is not transported by air.
The new study also suggests that the virus can survive up to 24 hours on cardboard packages, though it disintegrates over the course of a day — meaning cardboard packages that arrive in the mail would have only low levels of the virus unless the delivery person has coughed or sneezed on it or has handled it with contaminated hands.
Another study, the largest to date of children and the virus, has found that while most develop mild or moderate symptoms, a small percentage — especially babies and preschoolers — can become seriously ill. Children account for the smallest percentage of the tens of thousands of infections identified globally.
And though the health minister of France has urged people ill with the coronavirus to stay away from ibuprofen and aspirin, there was no research to back up the contention.
Reporting was contributed by Steven Erlanger, Elisabetta Povoledo, Maria Abi-Habib, Zia ur-Rehman, Marc Santora, Megan Specia, Heather Murphy, Damien Cave, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Ben Casselman, Sapna Maheshwari, David Yaffe-Bellany, Mark Landler, Stephen Castle, Ian Austen, Sarah Cliff, Adam Satariano, Jessica Silver-Greenberg, Nicholas Kulish Emily Cochrane, Nicholas Fandos, Katie Rogers, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Julian E. Barnes and Farnaz Fassihi.
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