Air Force evacuates 89 Americans from Honduras after coronavirus travel advisory; states increase restrictions

If your state is under a stay-at-home order, can you flee to another state to avoid the restrictions?

In California, the answer is no.

Under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s order instructing 40 million residents to stay home except for essential activities, residents are being directed to not travel across state lines.

The order, implemented Thursday, requires that California residents remain in the state unless it is for one of the critical infrastructure areas, according to the governor’s office. Residents are instructed to stay at home, and any travel that is not deemed essential is prohibited.

Some counties, like San Francisco, which implemented its own “stay-at-home” order earlier in the week, take cross-state travel a step further.

It is prohibited for a San Francisco resident to leave the county, not just the state of California, for any reason other than essential travel, according to the San Francisco mayor’s office. San Francisco’s order states the only travel allowed includes “travel to return to a place of residence from outside the jurisdiction” and “travel required for non-residents to return to their place of residence outside the County.”

California. New York. Illinois. More than 70 million people have been told to stay at home in these three states — effectively ordering one in five of all Americans to socially distance themselves to stem the spread of the coronavirus.

The orders essentially close three of the nation’s largest cities: New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. They come as Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Friday that Americans will need to stay at home as much as possible and maintain social distance from other people for at least several weeks.

New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) said Friday that all New Yorkers are prohibited from going into their offices unless they perform essential services, such as those who work at a hospital or grocery store or who provide Internet or water. Cuomo also has banned all nonessential gatherings. The regulations take effect Sunday.

“These provisions will be enforced,” he said. “These are not helpful hints. This is not if you really want to be a good citizen.”

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CARACAS, Venezuela — Inside one of Venezuela’s largest hospitals, doctors wearing gloves and masks but no protective gowns tended to a suspected coronavirus patient.

HIV patients languished in a room a few feet away. The door was left open, to allow air to circulate — the unit here at Caracas University Hospital has no working air conditioning. Running water, albeit with dark contaminants, came back three days ago. But doctors say it’s unlikely to last for long.

As in many hospitals in this collapsed socialist state, even washing hands is a luxury. The hospital has run out of soap, leaving doctors to bring their own, when possible. None of the six X-ray machines works. Without cleaning products to disinfect surfaces — including those in the waiting room where suspected coronavirus patients are held — hospital infections are common. A shipment of gloves and masks arrived Friday; doctors say they had gone a full month without them. Current supplies, they say, will run out in one week.

“If we start getting large numbers of patients, we will collapse,” said Maria Eugenia Landaeta, head of the infectious-diseases department at Caracas University Hospital. “Long lines of patients waiting, all beds full and patients we won’t be able to hospitalize. To sum up: total chaos.”

Analysts say Venezuela, already struggling under a dangerous mix of gaps in clean water and soap, underequipped and inadequately supplied public hospitals and authoritarian red tape, is uniquely vulnerable to the pandemic.

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The Air Force is evacuating 89 U.S. citizens who had been unable to return home from Honduras, according to the U.S. Southern Command.

The Air Force conducted two flights Friday that helped bring the Americans to Joint Base Charleston in South Carolina. The flights out of Honduras’ Soto Cano Air Base carried mainly the entire U.S. women’s football team, which had traveled to Honduras on March 11 to play in a tournament and do charity work.

On Sunday, the group of 57 Americans — made up of players, coaches, personnel staff and family members — had learned they were stranded in Honduras after the government sent workers home, called off flights and shuttered public transportation for at least seven days in efforts to contain the virus. The team was supposed to fly home Monday.

The U.S. Southern Command and the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa worked closely to facilitate both flights. On Thursday, the State Department issued a rare Level 4 travel warning against all international travel and that Americans abroad could face trouble getting to the United States.

On Thursday, President Trump had told reporters at the White House that the United States was considering tapping the military to help stranded travelers, including hundreds of Americans in Peru, though he did not offer specifics.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Friday said President Trump had approved a major disaster declaration for the state; a move that will allow the federal government to provide even more resources and relief.

No president has ever declared a major disaster in response to a public health issue before, according to E&E news. The designation is typically reserved for major natural events, including hurricanes, storms, drought and volcanic eruptions — or any other disaster “that the president believes has caused damage of such severity that it is beyond the combined capabilities of the state and local governments to respond,” according to FEMA.

“A major disaster declaration provides a wide range of federal assistance programs for individuals and public infrastructure, including funds for both emergency and permanent work,” FEMA wrote.

After invoking the Stafford Act to provide federal assistance to state and local governments, Trump invited state governors to request that he issue major disaster declarations as well, according to the Atlantic. The Atlantic reports that under a major disaster declaration, the federal government can provide unemployment assistance, food coupons, emergency transportation and other essential resources.

In the case of New York, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) said in a statement that she and her colleagues in the New York congressional delegation had sent a letter to Trump earlier this week, urging him to adhere to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s (D) request for a major disaster declaration in the state. She said it would provide a bevy of additional federal resources as New York continues to combat covid-19.

“New York State has been significantly impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, and we need more resources in order to be fully equipped,” she wrote Wednesday. FEMA notes that the type of assistance varies based on each governor’s request.

Other legislators, including from Iowa and Washington state, have sought similar disaster designations.

Florida, New Jersey, Nevada and Connecticut all moved Friday to curb large swaths of business as states take economic hits to combat the coronavirus.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) issued an executive order Friday afternoon that all on-premises restaurant sales must cease and all gyms and fitness centers must close. Restaurants can keep their kitchens open for takeout and delivery services only, a dramatic escalation from DeSantis’s announcement earlier this week that restaurants were permitted to stay open at 50 percent capacity.

Friday’s announcement came three days after the governor restricted bars, pubs and nightclubs, closing them for 30 days, although scenes of spring break revelry in Fort Myers, Siesta Key and Clearwater Beach continued this week, albeit at a more subdued pace.

DeSantis, however, does see the need for blowing off steam in the face of the coronavirus pandemic: The new executive order lifts some restrictions on restaurants to allow the sale of to-go sealed alcoholic beverages accompanying meals.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) announced a similar crackdown at his Friday news conference, saying he expects to issue an executive order Saturday that will shut down all nonessential businesses. Murphy also expects the executive order to prohibit “gatherings of any sort”; the details are still in the works, officials say.

In Nevada, Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) announced he was using his powers under the state’s emergency declaration to order all nonessential businesses to close at midnight until April 16. If businesses defy the directive and stay open, he said, state and local law enforcement will have the ability to treat it as a criminal act.

“Previously, I asked nonessential businesses to close. I’m no longer asking them to do that,” Sisolak said. “This is not the time to try and find loopholes.”

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D), too, signed an executive order Friday stating all nonessential businesses must close starting at 8 p.m. on Monday and lasting through at least April 22.

“It’s tough medicine,” Lamont said during his Friday news conference. “I think it’s the right medicine.”

Lamont, who is also urging residents to stay home when possible, said businesses but not individuals could face fines if they choose not to comply.

“The municipal police are not going to be heavy-handed,” Lamont said. “If there’s a local retail store that stays open, there will be a friendly reminder that the governor has an executive order that you should be closed.”

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The Food and Drug Administration said on Friday that consumers should avoid fraudulent and unauthorized products sold as at-home test kits for the coronavirus.

The agency said it hasn’t approved any such at-home tests. Some firms are beginning to offer them, in an effort to capitalize on the public’s continued frustration in not being able to get tested.

FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, in a statement, said the agency “sees the public health value in expanding the availability of COVID-19 testing through safe and accurate tests that may include home collection, and we are actively working with test developers in this space."

On Tuesday, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Deborah Birx said experts were exploring “innovative solutions,” like self-swabbing, but did not have enough data yet.

The Gates Foundation is one of several entities working on such a test.

Medical associations and unions pushed back Friday against new federal guidelines for conserving and reusing masks, saying it will leave them unprotected against a dangerous infection carried by waves of patients already at their doors.

“Needless to say, this is frightening for our staff,” Katie Oppenheim, chair of the union for University of Michigan nurses, said on a conference call with reporters.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, which represents 112,000 health professionals, said the delays in procuring additional equipment — when officials knew from the experience of other countries this would be a problem — were unethical.

“If I sound angry,” she said, “I am.”

President Trump has announced steps in recent days to address the nation’s dwindling supplies of protective equipment for health-care workers — authorizing the release of emergency stockpiles, and working with manufacturers to ramp up production in a wartime-like effort. But health-care workers on the front lines are voicing frustration, and panic, that such help may arrive too late.

If they can’t stay healthy, they say, the whole system will fall apart.

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