Maryland announces first death from coronavirus; dozens of D.C. firefighters and first-responders self-quarantine

A student at an elementary school in Southeast Washington tested positive for the coronavirus, according to school officials.

It marks the first announcement that a minor in the District has tested positive for the virus.

Rocketship Rise Academy Public Charter School informed families of the diagnosis in a letter Wednesday. The letter did not identify the child, but said the District’s health department would connect with anyone at the school who had contact with the student and may be at risk.

Rocketship Rise, which serves students in prekindergarten through fourth grade, has been closed since Friday. The District's traditional public and charter schools closed Friday as the city attempts to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

The school did not provide details on the condition of the student but said that the “child is taking the necessary precautions and following the advice of their medical professional."

“We are sharing this information with you now out of an abundance of caution,” school leadership wrote in the letter. “There is nothing more important than the safety and well-being of our families, staff and community members.”

The school’s announcement that a child has tested positive comes the same day as the D.C. government stopped providing some details about patients, including their ages and suspected exposure points. The District announced eight new cases of the virus on Wednesday.

Police union officials shut down a conference room at the Fraternal Order of Police lodge in Northwest Washington this week after a Metro Transit Police officer who attended a labor committee meeting at the facility last week tested positive for the coronavirus.

D.C. Lodge #1 president Gerald G. Neill Jr. alerted union members in an email that the Metro police officer met in the conference room for a Transit Police FOP Labor committee board meeting March 11. The officer then attended a general membership meeting in the lodge, the email said.

Neill said that Metro Transit officials placed board members in quarantine and two U.S. Capitol Police officers who attended the general membership meeting were quarantined.

“If you were in any sort of meeting in the conference room since the board meeting, contact your agency for their guidance,” Neill said. “We do not know what the Metro Transit officer touched or what bathroom he may have used in our building.”

Eight additional people have tested positive for the coronavirus in The District, officials announced Wednesday evening.

The total brings the number of cases of covid-19 to 40 in D.C. The reporting period covers Tuesday night to Wednesday.

LaQuandra Nesbitt, director of the D.C. Department of Health, disclosed the new cases in a call with community leaders, which the mayor’s spokeswoman confirmed.

Nesbitt said the city is optimistic the federal government will help with additional testing capability. But she cautioned officials were still determining whether to prioritize health workers, first responders and seniors with symptoms with increased capacity. She also said city officials have advised doctors that they only need standard surgical masks while conducting tests instead of more specialized respiratory masks.

John Falcicchio, the mayor’s chief of staff, said the mayor’s office hopes to launch a grant program for businesses hit hard by the coronavirus by early next week. The program was authorized by emergency legislation signed into law this week.

In the meantime, the U.S. Small Business Administration has accepted the city’s declaration for assistance that allows local businesses to apply for economic injury disaster loans. Falcicchio encouraged D.C. businesses to apply early before other jurisdictions qualify for similar funding.

Maryland announced an additional 23 cases of coronavirus Wednesday, bringing the state’s total to 86. Virginia reported 10 new cases for a total of 77.

Metro is asking Congress for emergency federal assistance as ridership and fare revenue has plummeted during the coronavirus pandemic while costs to protect employees have risen, which has leaders projecting a deficit of more than $50 million a month in the transit authority’s budget.

On Wednesday, Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld sent a letter to the Washington metropolitan region’s congressional delegation asking for help with “dire financial circumstances” as the transit agency “takes extraordinary steps to protect the health and safety of riders and employees while maintaining essential services for the Nation’s Capital.”

Wiedefeld said the agency has spent $17 million over the past few months purchasing personal protective equipment such as face masks, wipes, gloves and hand sanitizer for front-line employees while expanding the use of disinfectants to clean Metro vehicles, stations and equipment.

Meanwhile, Metro, which had seen an increase in ridership earlier in the year, has lost 85 percent of its ridership as it decreased service in the past week in an attempt to protect employees and encourage residents to stay home and exercise social distancing against the spread of the virus.

The result, Wiedefeld said, is that Metro projects a deficit of at least $52 million each month.

“Federal assistance is critical to help us offset the direct costs and revenue losses we are facing,” he said. “We need support for transit operations, but traditional transit formulas are not designed to address our unique circumstances. We need immediate operating funding to address this unprecedented loss of $52 million a month.

“I request your support in securing this emergency funding for WMATA so that we may continue to fulfill our critical role in safely providing lifeline service throughout the National Capital Region,” Wiedefeld added.

The letter was addressed to 12 members of the Senate and House representing Maryland, Virginia and the District.

An all-mail special election on April 28 to fill the Baltimore-based seat of the late representative Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) will present an early test of how easy it will be to provide voters with safer ways to cast ballots during the coronavirus pandemic without discouraging participation.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) on Tuesday ordered the election to be conducted entirely by mail. Normally, mail-in balloting is an option for any voter who requests a mailed ballot. But in the state’s 7th Congressional District, a black-majority district that encompasses half of the city of Baltimore and smaller swaths of Baltimore and Howard counties, past participation in mailed ballots has been dismally low, raising concerns among voting advocates about how the state will get the word out to voters.

In last year’s Democratic and Republican primaries for governor, for instance, just under 3,000 voters mailed in their ballots in the 7th District, compared with about 72,000 who voted in person on Election Day and 33,000 who voted in person at early voting locations.

David Becker, head of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research, said moving quickly to an all-mail system raises the risk that there won’t be enough time to educate voters who are unaccustomed to it. And that could harm communities of color disproportionately, he said. A study conducted in five California counties in 2018 showed that black and Hispanic voters were twice as likely to vote in person than white voters, he said.

It will also be challenging for the state to produce the far greater volume of mail-in ballots on such short notice, said Judd Choate, elections director in Colorado, which spent years implementing its all-mail voting system.

Officials with the Maryland State Board of Elections did not immediately respond to inquiries about the special election. Armstead B.C. Jones Sr., elections director for the city of Baltimore, said he is worried about lower turnout, the difficulty for homebound or ill residents to vote by mail, and the high frequency of younger voters failing to update their voter registration after they’ve moved.

But Jones said he pushed for an all-mail election “because I did not want to jeopardize the staff, the election judges as well as the citizens coming to polling places. I would not intentionally do anything that would hinder anyone from voting."

The two candidates running in the 7th Congressional District — which became vacant after Cummings’s death — are Kweisi Mfume (D), a former president of the NAACP, and Republican Kim Klacik, whose tweets about blight in Baltimore prompted President Trump to criticize Cummings and describe Baltimore as “rat and rodent infested.”

Need a drink right about now?

Maryland has removed limits on purchases of craft beer and distilled spirits purchased at tap and tasting rooms for the duration of the governor’s state of emergency, Comptroller Peter Franchot announced Wednesday.

The new policy only applies to carryout and off-premise consumption since Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) ordered all bars and restaurants closed earlier this week. Customers had previously been limited to purchasing a case of beer or three regular-sized bottles of liquor.

“We’re in a public health and economic emergency of unprecedented proportions. Maryland’s local and independent retailers are taking an insane blow,” said Len N. Foxwell, chief of staff for Franchot. “It’s imperative that we all pull together to help these businesses.”

More books were checked out of the D.C. Public Library system in three recent days than were checked out in all of February.

Richard Reyes-Gavilan, executive director of D.C. Public Library, shared the numbers in a Twitter post Monday. He said those figures did not include e-books. But he said his team has found that there was a “similar spike.”

D.C. public libraries closed Friday until April 1 because of the coronavirus. Many other D.C. area libraries have also closed due to the virus.

Virginia Hospital Center tested 60 people in its first six hours of collecting coronavirus swabs at a new drive-through center in Arlington, officials said Wednesday afternoon.

The tests, which are only open to Arlington County residents or employees with pre-submitted doctor’s orders, will take five to seven business days to be processed and get results.

Chief nursing officer Melody Dickerson said the testing is going smoothly and she is confident that the hospital has enough test kits for the immediate future.