Here are some significant developments:
- Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said a second wave of infections is “inevitable” in the United States, which has recorded more than 1 million confirmed cases — nearly one-third of the global total.
- As antsy Americans show growing signs of “quarantine fatigue” and officials face pressure to ease restrictions, factories, malls and state governments in many parts of the country are taking steps toward reopening.
- ‘Frostbite’ toes and ‘second-week crashes’ are among the curious and sometimes dangerous phenomena among some covid-19 patients that have caught the interest of medical experts in recent weeks.
- The U.S. economy shrank by 4.8 percent from January through March as it saw the worst slowdown in growth since the Great Recession.
- Studies out of China show that traces of the virus can be detected in air, but its unclear whether the aerosols are actually infectious or a significant part of the pandemic.
- Signaling confidence that it has contained the virus, China scheduled its big legislative meetings for late May. The “Two Sessions” meetings had been postponed at the height of the outbreak.
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Maryland orders coronavirus tests for all patients, staff at nursing homes, where 516 have died
Maryland announced Wednesday that it will test all nursing home residents and staffers for the novel coronavirus, which has spread through 194 facilities, infecting 4,822 staff members and residents and killing 516. Officials said the state may be the first in the country to mandate universal testing.
Data released Wednesday evening showed that half of Maryland’s confirmed coronavirus-related deaths and more than one-fifth of its cases were linked to skilled-nursing facilities. That is a higher percentage than in California, where about 30 percent of deaths have been linked to nursing facilities, and in New York, where the figure is about 20 percent.
The Maryland data, made public after relatives and advocates for nursing home residents called repeatedly for greater transparency, provides startling evidence of the scale and severity of outbreaks in the state.
Read more here.
Pennsylvania’s complaint form for social distancing violations spammed by far-right trolls
When Pennsylvania launched an online form for tips on businesses that may have been ignoring social distancing orders, the response was overwhelming. In less than a week, the portal received more than 5,000 submissions.
But most of those messages are from far-right trolls, who appear to be coordinating an effort to shut down what they are calling a “snitch form.”
“Many of the complaints have been and continue to be inappropriate,” Nate Wardle, a spokesman for the state Department of Health, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. People who fill out the form should have “a genuine public health concern about a business.”
According to a report by the left-leaning nonprofit organization Media Matters, the online activists have been communicating about the portal on message boards and encouraging each other to submit false reports.
On one chat room for supporters of President Trump, they urged one another to “flood the form” and posted receipts of their submissions to the Pennsylvania portal.
Besides inundating the state’s system, their plans are also meant to stir up conflict. Some users said they used the form to complain about synagogues or the Pennsylvania Democratic Party.
At least two Republican state lawmakers had previously criticized the portal, with both of them calling it a “snitch” form, the Inquirer reported.
Number of nursing homes with publicly reported cases soars
The number of nursing homes publicly reporting cases of covid-19 has doubled in the past week, with more than 1 in 6 facilities nationwide now acknowledging infections among residents or staff, a Washington Post analysis of state and federal data found.
The rise is driven in part by newly released information about previous novel coronavirus infections from states including Michigan, Maryland, Kentucky and South Carolina. Some states have not yet publicly released the names of affected nursing homes.
In five states — Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Georgia and New Jersey — the virus has struck a majority of nursing homes, the data shows. In New Jersey, second only to New York in total number of confirmed coronavirus cases, health officials have reported infections at 80 percent of the state’s homes.
The tally paints a grim picture of the scale of the outbreak in homes tasked with caring for the elderly and infirm. More than 2,700 Medicare-certified nursing homes had publicly reported cases as of Tuesday, The Post found.
Read more here.
Los Angeles offers free testing to all county residents
All residents of Los Angeles County can access free coronavirus testing at city-run sites, Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) said on Wednesday.
Previously, the city had only offered testing to residents with symptoms as well as essential workers and people who lived or worked in nursing homes and other kinds of institutional facilities.
In an announcement on Twitter, Garcetti said that priority would still be given to front-line workers and anyone experiencing symptoms, including cough, fever or shortness of breath.
But the move, which makes Los Angeles the first major city in the country to offer such widespread testing, allows individuals without symptoms to be tested.
Health experts have repeatedly said that mass testing is necessary to determine how many people have contracted the virus — and in particular, those who may not have experienced symptoms — and then begin to reopen the economy.
Testing is by appointment only and can be arranged at one of the city’s 35 sites.
Southern governors who initially downplayed coronavirus threat ease into reopening of their states
TAMPA — Last month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was criticized for not quickly closing his state down — and allowing spring breakers to party on beaches — as the novel coronavirus spread. Neighboring Alabama insisted that it did not face the same threat from the virus as other places did, as did Mississippi, whose governor insisted his state was “never going to be China.”
All three governors eventually issued stay-at-home orders as the number of coronavirus cases skyrocketed. They are moving to reopen — much more slowly and methodically than other nearby states but in ways that take cues directly from President Trump.
DeSantis declared a victory of sorts while saying that the state’s hospitals are far under capacity and that Florida has set the standard for responsible reopening. Still, he said, his state’s pace would be more moderate than others. Trump, who last week blasted the governor of Georgia for his aggressive reopening plan, issued DeSantis the ultimate endorsement this week, bringing him to the Oval Office and showering him with praise over Florida’s response to the coronavirus.
Read more here.
Which states are doing a better job protecting renters from eviction?
A majority of the country’s 43.8 million renting households have lost at least some of their income in the coronavirus shutdown, a much higher share than homeowners, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll done in mid-April.
This means an increasing number of households are at risk of missing rent payments, which could cascade into a national flood of evictions and forced homelessness.
Facing the pandemic, state governments have adopted special rules to protect renters. Landlords, attorneys, judges, sheriffs and renters are all trying to keep up with daily changes in the system.
Laid-off workers in Pakistan are now helping to save the environment
Although the covid-19 shutdown has disrupted their jobs, thousands of unemployed manual workers in Pakistan are taking up a new cause: saving the environment.
In late March, Pakistan instituted a nationwide lockdown, a move that closed its borders and impacted the economy. Since then, however, the government has hired out-of-work laborers to plant saplings as part of the country’s five-year initiative to plant 10 billion trees.
The program, launched in 2018, aims to create a greener country and more environmental awareness. In April, as scores of people lost their jobs because of the shutdown, officials rebranded the program as a job stimulus with more than 63,000 positions opening for the “10 Billion Tree Tsunami.”
Employees, known as “jungle workers” for their efforts in planting approximately 30 million trees already in areas like the Punjab province, earn the equivalent of $3 to $5 daily, according to Al Jazeera. Mostly young people and women have been hired for the work that includes building up nurseries.
However, social distancing measures remain in place as the laborers have been advised to wear masks and stand six feet apart.
“We can absorb all the unemployed laborers and workers who have fled the cities and returned to their villages in the past few weeks,” Shahid Rashid Awan, a project director, told Al Jazeera.
When the program initially launched, projections revealed the country would require more than a trillion trees to reverse the effects of deforestation. Still, with the help of laid-off workers, the revitalized program could effectively help Pakistan fight climate change as the program targets to plant 50 million trees.
After crowded beaches last weekend, officials differ on plans for this weekend
Crowds spurred by warmer weather and “quarantine fatigue” have swarmed beaches in California, Georgia and Texas, but officials’ responses have varied: While one California county announced new rules Wednesday to further limit the masses, Texas and Georgia are reopening beaches — over local leaders’ objections.
On Wednesday, the Texas General Land Office told coastal communities that they don’t have the power to open or close beaches beginning on Friday. Some of those communities had chosen to close their beaches after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s stay-at-home order didn’t specifically name beaches among the closures. The city of Galveston’s beaches were off limits starting on March 29. Galveston County closed its beaches but reopened them on April 13.
In Georgia, Tybee Island had similarly lost its choice to close beaches after Gov. Brian Kemp (R) decided to reopen the state, Tybee Island City Manager Shawn Gillen told McClatchy. This weekend, about 10,000 beachgoers are expected, Gillen said.
However, in California, where a heat wave last weekend spurred confined residents to head to the sand, Santa Cruz County announced it will close its beaches from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. starting this weekend.
“Despite warnings against traveling to Santa Cruz County for beach access and against congregating on beaches, local law enforcement spent the weekend responding to numerous issues all along our coastlines,” Santa Cruz Sheriff Jim Hart said in a news release.
Congressman criticizes federal government’s plan to ‘ramp back up’ operations, asks for more details
The federal government’s guidance for how agencies can begin reopening amid the coronavirus pandemic raises significant questions and could endanger employees, Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) argued in letters made public Wednesday.
In the letters — sent to the acting heads of the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management, who issued the memo last week about federal plans to “ramp back up government operations” — Connolly said the guidance could lead to conflicts between what agencies decide and what local officials are doing.
“The Trump Administration’s guidance for reopening the federal government is unclear and incomplete, puts the health of millions of federal employees at risk, and demonstrates a lack of competence and leadership when our federal workforce needs it the most,” Connolly wrote to Russell T. Vought, acting director of the budget office, and Michael J. Rigas, acting director of the personnel office.
In the guidance issued last week, Vought and Rigas did not lay out explicit deadlines, but instead described a multitiered approach that left some decisions to agency leaders.
A spokesperson for the personnel office did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday about the letters. A spokesman for the budget office disputed the suggestion that federal agencies were given unclear guidance.
“President Trump has ensured the government remains open and essential services continue to be provided to the American public throughout this emergency,” the spokesman said in a statement. “It’s no surprise Democrats in Congress continue to play politics, but the fact is agencies have been given clear and consistent guidance throughout this crisis to maximize telework, and they are now working to return to normal operations as conditions warrant across each state.”
Connolly asked for a briefing by May 15 to discuss what actions would be taken to support federal employees and agencies through this process.
Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), ranking member of the government operations subcommittee, said the administration has given federal agencies and departments “clear and consistent guidance on protecting our nation’s federal workforce” throughout the pandemic.
“New challenges will surely emerge as the nation reopens, and I have full confidence in the Trump Administration’s ability to prioritize and maintain the health and safety of federal employees while resuming more normal operations on behalf of the American people,” Hice said in a statement.
U.S. reports 66,000 more deaths than expected so far this year
The United States has suffered at least 66,000 more deaths than expected this year, a toll that includes the devastation directly caused by the covid-19 pandemic and a sharp rise in fatalities not attributed to the virus, the government reported late Wednesday.
The new report from the National Center for Health Statistics shows 33,756 deaths from covid-19 and 32,325 from all other causes since Jan. 1. Other causes include heart attacks, accidents, overdoses, cancer and a wide variety of other fatal diseases. It also could include people who died of covid-19 at home but whose death was incorrectly attributed to another cause.
The numbers are almost certainly a substantial undercount of the actual total. The report notes that information on the cause of deaths can take as long as eight weeks to reach the federal government and be tallied.
On Wednesday, the death toll from coronavirus alone passed 60,000 since Feb. 29, according to data collected by The Washington Post.
But the official statistics support the findings of independent efforts to determine the pandemic’s hidden toll — including reporting by The Post and other newspapers showing that excess U.S. deaths soared in the early weeks of the pandemic.
Read more here.
Sewage may be key to tracking covid-19 outbreaks, researchers find
Scientists around the world have found the genetic material for the novel coronavirus in their cities’ sewer systems — meaning that a promising way of tracing the spread of the virus may lie in what goes down the toilet.
Researchers have detected genetic traces of the coronavirus in the wastewater in the Bay Area in California and in Massachusetts, as well as in European cities including Rome, Paris and Amsterdam. It is unlikely that a person may become infected by drinking city water, which is treated, but the virus’s genetic traces detected in sewage systems may serve a useful purpose: With the data, researchers can predict outbreaks before they are detected by testing.
A study published by the KWR Water Research Institute, a research group based in the Netherlands, which hasn’t been peer-reviewed, describes how researchers found covid-19 in the wastewater of the city of Amersfoort on March 5, before any cases were reported in that city through testing.
The researchers said this form of tracing could be a viable method for detecting a second wave.
“With regular sewage measurements we could provide additional information on the circulation of viruses in the population,” they wrote. “Using this method we might also be able to measure whether the number of virus infections in a city will increase again next winter.”
In Paris, after researchers saw a rise in levels of genetic material from the virus in wastewater, deaths increased as well.
While wastewater-based disease monitoring is a relatively new strategy, it has previously been deployed to predict potential outbreaks before they are reported by hospitals and clinics. In 2013, viral polio was detected in wastewater in Israel, providing enough time to ensure vaccinations. No child was paralyzed during the outbreak, according to the Times of Israel.
Elon Musk launches into expletive-laden rant, calling quarantine measures ‘fascist’
Elon Musk launched into an expletive-laden rant on Tesla’s earnings call Wednesday, calling shelter-in-place orders “fascist” and demanding political officials give people their freedom back.
“To say that they cannot leave their house and they will be arrested if they do, this is fascist,” he said, before the call abruptly cut out. “This is not democratic — this is not freedom.”
The company was forced to shut down its Fremont, Calif., factory just as it was ramping up production for its Model Y, the crossover vehicle it expects to be its best-selling product.
The comments followed Tesla posting a slight profit Wednesday, a lukewarm signal as worries mounted about the electric car maker’s trajectory amid the global pandemic.
Read more here.
Brooklyn funeral home stored dozens of bodies in rental trucks
For several weeks, residents living near Andrew T. Cleckley Funeral Home in Brooklyn complained of a pungent odor. On Wednesday, investigators discovered the origin of the smell: dozens of bodies stacked inside two trucks parked outside the morgue.
Inside at least one U-Haul truck and a tractor-trailer, police found the bodies waiting to be buried or cremated. Although officials did not release the total count, according to one report, “30 to 60” bodies were found inside the trucks. The U-Haul rental, which was not believed to be refrigerated, had an orange “Funeral” sticker placed on the back window.
The trucks were parked outside on Utica Avenue, a busy thoroughfare surrounded by other businesses, including a Department of Motor Vehicles office and a gas station.
“I’ve been seeing a lot of action driving up and down Utica Avenue, and I see bodies being carried out all day long, nonstop,” an unidentified man told PIX 11 television station in New York.
As New York City wages its war against the covid-19 pandemic, regional funeral directors have described the toll the virus has taken on the death industry. Earlier in the month, the city dispatched 45 mobile mortuaries to help mitigate the pressure on funeral parlors. The bodies stashed outside the Cleckley Funeral Home have not been declared to be coronavirus victims.
Swedish city will spread manure at festival venue to discourage crowds
Pooping on the plans of festival revelers, a city in Sweden will spread one ton of chicken manure at one of its parks to discourage people from gathering and possibly exposing themselves and others to the novel coronavirus.
The southern Swedish city of Lund has seen an attendance of tens of thousands of people — mostly students from Lund University — in the past at the park, Stadspark, to celebrate the start of Valborg, a Scandinavian holiday usually marked with bonfires and singing and dancing to folk songs, Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan first reported.
However, instead of the festival at the end of April, the city’s environmental board opted to spread the manure, which will not only discourage crowds but fertilize the grass, Lund Mayor Philip Sandberg posted on Facebook on Wednesday.
“Sitting at Valborg in a park that stinks of chicken manure and where it makes noise with leaf blowing and other things is not a pleasant experience,” he wrote. “On the other hand, it is good for the lawn, as chicken manure contains phosphorus and nitrogen, so that we have a really nice city park for the summer season.”