Coronavirus in the US: Live News Updates

In New York, which saw a record number of deaths, “the bad news is actually terrible.”

New York, the hardest hit state in America, reported its highest number of coronavirus-related deaths in a single day on Wednesday, announcing that another 779 people had died. That brought the virus death toll to 6,268 in New York State, which Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo noted was more than twice as many people as the state had lost in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“I went through 9/11,” he said. “I thought in my lifetime I wouldn’t have to see anything like that again — nothing that bad, nothing that tragic.”

Mr. Cuomo had begun his daily briefing, which attracts a national audience, saying that he felt “mixed emotions” at the news he had to share. The number of hospitalizations had fallen in recent days, he said, suggesting that social distancing measures were working to flatten the steep curve of the virus’s spread, at least for now. The rates depend not only on the number of new arrivals but also on hospital admission standards.

“If we stop what we are doing, you will see that curve change,” Mr. Cuomo warned.

Then he pivoted to a more somber tone. “The bad news isn’t just bad,” he said. “The bad news is actually terrible.”

Mr. Cuomo said that the staggering death toll could continue to rise even as hospitalization rates were falling, because it reflected people who had been on ventilators for long periods of time.

The virus has ravaged public transit in the New York metropolitan region, where it is needed to transport many doctors, nurses and emergency responders to their jobs. At least 41 transit workers have died, and more than 6,000 have fallen sick or self-quarantined. Crew shortages have caused over 800 subway delays and many cancellations.

And as high as the toll is, it does not account for some people who died in their homes. “The blunt truth is coronavirus is driving these very tragic deaths,” Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York said on CNN on Wednesday morning, referring to rising numbers of people dying at home. “We are talking about 100 to 200 people per day.”

During his midday briefing, Mr. Cuomo said it was “a very real possibility” that some people who died at home were not added to the official tally. Here’s what else he talked about:

• More data was needed to determine why black, Hispanic and poor New Yorkers had been disproportionately affected by the disease, he said. “It always seems that the poorest people pay the highest price,” Mr. Cuomo said. Black and Hispanic people in New York City are twice as likely to die of the virus as white people, according to preliminary data released on Wednesday by the city.

• He was also asked if the state was too slow to shut down society. “No, no,” he said. “I think New York was early, and the actions we took were more dramatic than most.” The Times found that initial efforts by New York officials to stem the outbreak were hampered by their own confused guidance, unheeded warnings, delayed decisions and political infighting.

• He expressed reluctance to offer a timeline on when social gatherings could begin again, when asked about New York’s theater industry, which will remain shuttered until at least June. “I wouldn’t use what Broadway thinks as a barometer of anything,” he said.

New York State has now passed Spain as well as Italy in confirmed cases. The state has more cases than any single country in the world outside of the United States.

The White House and Democrats propose additional emergency funds to help the economy.

A fresh debate in Washington over the next injection of federal dollars needed to rescue the struggling economy was well underway on Wednesday, with Democrats calling for double the $250 billion requested by the Trump administration and pressing for conditions on a new infusion of loans for businesses.

The counterproposal threatened to slow the emergency aid for distressed businesses, which Senate Republicans had hoped to speed through as early as Thursday during a procedural session without the entire chamber present.

Democratic leaders announced on Wednesday that they wanted another $250 billion for hospitals, states and food aid. And they proposed reserving half of the loan program for businesses owned by farmers, women, people of color and veterans.

In a joint statement, Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, said they supported the administration’s request for an additional $250 billion for the small business loan program. But, they said, $125 billion of those funds should be directed to underserved businesses that might otherwise have trouble securing loans.

The Democratic leaders also said they wanted to add $100 billion for hospitals, community health centers and health systems — in part to shore up testing and the distribution of critical safety gear for health workers on the front lines — as well as $150 billion for state and local governments and a 15 percent increase in food assistance benefits.

In the statement, Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer said that after the quick infusion of funds, Congress would need to get to work on another economic relief package to “provide transformational relief as the American people weather this assault on their lives and livelihoods.”

Mr. Schumer spoke on Wednesday to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin about the Democratic proposal, according to Justin Goodman, a spokesman for the minority leader. He said Democrats hoped Republicans would support what they were calling their Small Business Plus plan tomorrow in the Senate.

It was unclear whether Republicans would agree to the additions, although some lawmakers warned against doing anything that could delay an infusion of cash that both parties agree is badly needed for small businesses. Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said the Democratic proposal amounted to a “shameful threat to block this funding,” although Democrats have made no such threat and said it should be dropped “immediately.”

“Our small businesses desperately need help — now,” Mr. Cornyn said.

Also on Wednesday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that General Motors would provide 30,000 ventilators to the nation’s stockpile by the end of August for $489 million.

The W.H.O. director general responds to Trump’s comments with a dire warning on politicization.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, made an impassioned plea on Wednesday for global solidarity, warning that politicizing the pandemic was “playing with fire” and that disunity and finger-pointing would result in “many more body bags.”

Dr. Tedros’s comments came a day after Mr. Trump falsely claimed that the W.H.O. had “missed the call” on the rising threat in China and threatened to withhold American funding for the organization, which exceeds $400 million annually.

“When there are cracks at the national level and global level, that’s when the virus succeeds,” Dr. Tedros said, though he did not cite Mr. Trump by name. “Please quarantine politicizing Covid. That’s the way if we want to win.”

He added: “We shouldn’t waste time pointing fingers. We need to unite.”

While some critics have called on Dr. Tedros to resign, he said he was not deterred.

“We will do everything we can to serve humanity,” Dr. Tedros said. “We’re not angels. We are human beings. So we make mistakes, like other human beings.”

A jail in Chicago is now the largest-known source of U.S. infections.

The Cook County jail in Chicago, a sprawling facility that is among the largest jails in the nation, has emerged as the largest-known source of U.S. virus infections, according to data compiled by The Times.

At least 353 cases can be linked to the jail — more than have been connected to the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, a nursing home in Kirkland, Wash., or the cluster centered in New Rochelle, N.Y.

The Cook County Sheriff’s Office, which operates the jail, said 238 inmates and 115 staff members had tested positive as of Wednesday. (The jail had previously reported higher numbers for inmates, but revised those down on Wednesday.) But because a vast majority of the jail’s 5,000 inmates have not been tested, corrections officers have said the numbers are likely to be far higher. In late March, the jail had just two diagnoses.

The outbreak appears to confirm the concerns of many health officials, who warned that America’s overcrowded and unsanitary jails and prisons could be a major source of spread. Those warnings prompted authorities across the country to release thousands of inmates to try to slow the infection, save lives and preserve medical resources.

Still, hundreds of diagnoses have been confirmed at local, state and federal correctional facilities — almost certainly an undercount, given a lack of testing and the virus’s rapid spread — leading to hunger strikes in immigrant detention centers and demands for more protection from prison employee unions.

In Cook County, officials released hundreds of inmates early — all of whom had been convicted of nonviolent crimes like drug possession and disorderly conduct. Judges are continuing to examine the cases of each inmate to determine if bonds can be lowered for certain people. That would allow dozens, perhaps hundreds, more people to be released, officials say.

The sheriff, Thomas J. Dart, has set up a quarantine area for those who have tested positive and another to monitor those showing symptoms. The most serious patients are being taken to a hospital.

But inmates and corrections officers have complained that the jail’s safety measures are inadequate. A protest was held outside the jail on Tuesday. Advocates and family members have also filed a federal lawsuit seeking the early release of older inmates and those who have chronic medical conditions which may make them particularly vulnerable.

The union representing corrections officers there has complained that the sheriff’s office failed to provide adequate protective equipment to the jail’s staff and has provided only cursory instruction and training to avoid contracting the virus and limiting its spread.

In New York City, jails like Rikers Island are also seeing infection rates grow exponentially. City and state officials have promised the mass release of inmates. But many say they are not moving quickly enough, putting inmates, staff and the city at risk.

Bernie Sanders drops out of the presidential race.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont dropped out of the Democratic presidential race on Wednesday, concluding a quest for the White House that began five years ago in relative obscurity but ultimately elevated him as a champion of the working class, a standard-bearer of American liberalism and the leader of a self-styled political revolution.

“I cannot in good conscience continue to mount a campaign that cannot win and which would interfere with the important work required of all of us in this difficult hour,” Mr. Sanders said over a live stream Wednesday morning.

Mr. Sanders’s exit from the race establishes former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the presumptive nominee to challenge Mr. Trump, and leaves the progressive movement without a prominent voice in the 2020 race.

In a race reshaped, and eclipsed, by the virus, Mr. Sanders faced no realistic path to the nomination after a series of lopsided losses to Mr. Biden, beginning in South Carolina in late February and culminating with a string of losses last month in crucial states like Michigan and Florida.

Mr. Biden now faces the challenge of uniting the Democratic Party around his candidacy, especially younger and more progressive voters who had favored the Vermont senator — and he will have to do so while campaigning remotely for the foreseeable future because of the pandemic.

Several liberal and youth-focused organizations, some of which had previously endorsed Mr. Sanders, sent an open letter to Mr. Biden on Wednesday expressing concern over “his inability to earn the trust of the vast majority of voters under 45 years old.”

The letter, signed by groups like Justice Democrats, the Sunrise Movement and March For Our Lives Action, sought to put pressure on Mr. Biden and his team over two key areas — policy and personnel. The groups urged Mr. Biden to adopt policies like the Green New Deal and asked him to include progressive elected officials on key policy teams and strategic decisions.

The narrowing of the race had implications for the remaining primaries, many of which have been pushed back because of the pandemic. New Jersey postponed its primary from June 2 to July 7, but now the contest will most likely be irrelevant.

On Wednesday, Mr. Cuomo addressed the coming New York primary election that has been postponed until June. “By executive order, all New Yorkers can vote absentee on June 23,” he said.

“We are saying that absentee voting is an option,” Mr. Cuomo said. “Not a necessity.”

Stay-at-home orders have quieted the planet so much that seismographs can chart the hush.

Seismometers may be built to detect earthquakes, but their mechanical ears hear much more. Even the everyday hum of humanity — people moving about on cars, trains and planes — has a seismically detectable heartbeat.

But as billions of people have been instructed to stay home to try to curtail the pandemic’s spread, the roar of urban life has turned into a whisper all over the world. Today, in cities large and small, the thumping pulse of civilization is now barely detectable on many seismograms.

“It did make the scale of the shutdowns a bit more real to me,” said Celeste Labedz, a graduate student in geophysics at the California Institute of Technology.

In person, you can see only your neighborhood’s dedication to remaining home. With seismometers, Ms. Labedz said, you can see the collective willingness of millions of the world’s urban dwellers to hunker down.

London is no longer buzzing. Paula Koelemeijer, a seismologist at Royal Holloway, University of London, said the seismometer in her suburban house was clocking a 20 to 25 percent reduction in average weekly noise, compared with the week before Britain began its lockdown.

Noise levels on some seismic stations in Los Angeles have dropped to below half of what they normally are, Ms. Labedz said.

Claudio Satriano, a seismologist at the Paris Institute of Earth Physics, detected a 38 percent drop in the average daytime noise in his city.

Scientists are now able to better hear the planet’s natural tectonic soundtrack. With the volume of humanity reduced, “we can detect smaller earthquakes, just like how it’s easier to hear a phone ring in a library than at a rock concert,” Ms. Labedz said.

Some college students don’t want to pay in-person tuition for online classes.

Students at the University of Chicago are organizing a tuition strike, threatening to withhold their payments for the spring quarter if the school doesn’t give them a hefty discount.

That cry is being heard on other campuses, as well, as students complain that online classes don’t measure up to the real thing and say they shouldn’t have to pay the full load for a subpar experience, especially at a time when more are facing financial uncertainties.

While a number of colleges are offering refunds of room and board charges, students in a number of schools are asking them to lower tuition as well.

At the New School in New York City, students have called for a boycott of online classes this week if the school didn’t refund part of their spring tuition. Students at Stanford, the University of California at Berkeley, and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts have all started online petitions calling for partial refunds.

In Chicago, an ad hoc group of undergraduate and graduate students is calling for the institution to cut tuition by half and eliminate fees for as long as the pandemic continues. The group has collected more than 1,400 signatures on a petition.

“Students are extremely vulnerable,” Julia Attie, a senior who is one of the organizers, said in an email. “Many are experiencing severe financial and housing insecurity.”

Undergraduate tuition for the spring term, which began this week, is more than $19,000 and is due on April 29. The total annual cost of attendance at the University of Chicago, including tuition, housing and other costs, is more than $80,000, one of the highest in the country. The university guarantees free tuition for families with incomes under $125,000.

The university said that it is already being forced to take austerity measures because of the crisis.

In an email to faculty and staff on Tuesday, Robert Zimmer, the university’s president, said it was pivoting from focusing on health issues raised by the virus to looking at financial issues. Mr. Zimmer said that the university expected a weakened endowment, reduced alumni donations and a higher demand for financial aid, all of which would take a financial toll.

Mr. Zimmer predicted that the financial impact of the pandemic “is likely to be as great as or even greater than in the financial crisis of 2008-09.”

Federal and local officials are concerned about cases in the D.C. region.

As cases keep rising in and around the nation’s capital, stories of residents not complying with social distancing guidelines have been prevalent. On ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Wednesday, Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House Task Force, said federal officials were “concerned about the metro area of Washington and Baltimore.”

As of Tuesday, there were 1,440 cases in Washington, and 27 deaths. The district’s latest data shows that nearly 60 percent of the dead were African-American people, though they make up about 46 percent of its population.

Mayor Muriel E. Bowser said that she was worried about the disproportionate impact the virus is having on black people — a concern that has also emerged in other places across the country.

The district’s stay-at-home order went into effect on April 1, nearly a month after its first case was confirmed, on March 7. Like other orders, it makes exceptions for grocery shopping, medical appointments, and “allowable recreational activities,” like walking and riding bikes.

Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, the nonvoting delegate for the district, wrote to the acting director of the National Park Service on Tuesday requesting the closure of the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials amid reports that they had been attracting crowds, making it hard to maintain social distancing.

“Closure would protect the public and NPS employees, including U.S. Park Police officers,” Ms. Norton’s letter said. “Federal agencies need to lead by example and do everything possible to flatten the curve.”

Under fire for trades during the pandemic, Senator Kelly Loeffler says she will divest from individual stocks.

Seeking to move past allegations that she has tried to profit from the crisis, Senator Kelly Loeffler, Republican of Georgia, announced on Wednesday that she and her husband would divest from all individual stocks and move the money into mutual and exchange-traded funds.

Ms. Loeffler, a new senator, has faced weeks of attacks from her political rivals in both parties and scrutiny from the news media about stock trades worth millions of dollars made earlier this year in her name, before the pandemic roiled the financial markets. Ms. Loeffler’s critics questioned whether she and a handful of other lawmakers who actively traded stocks during the same period had used nonpublic information they had received from their jobs to make money or avoid the same financial losses as other investors.

Ms. Loeffler continued on Wednesday to adamantly deny that, insisting that she had done nothing wrong, legally or ethically. The stock trades were all made by outside financial advisers at Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Sepio Capital and Wells Fargo, who independently manage her investments, she said, adding that she was not privy to any meaningful nonpublic information because of her job in the Senate.

Still, the decision seemed to be an acknowledgment that Ms. Loeffler’s vast wealth, once thought to be an asset for her campaign, had become a political distraction and a liability as she seeks to hold her Senate seat this fall facing Democratic and Republican challengers. Ms. Loeffler, a former businesswoman without political experience, was appointed to fill a vacant Senate seat late last year.

“I’m doing this because this transparency is being abused for political gain, and the steps I’ve taken to distance myself from these accounts are being ignored,” she said, referring to the periodic financial statements that senators are required to make public. “I left the private sector to serve the people of Georgia, not make a profit.”

The virus has found a foothold in rural America.

The virus has officially reached more than two-thirds of the country’s rural counties, with one in 10 reporting at least one death. Doctors and elected officials are warning that a late-arriving wave of illness could overwhelm rural communities that are older, poorer and sicker than much of the country, and already dangerously short on medical help.

“Everybody never really thought it would get to us,” said Grace Rhodes, 18, who is from Southern Illinois and is studying to become a nurse. “A lot of people are in denial.”

But many rural doctors, leaders and health experts worry that they will have fewer hospital beds, ventilators and nurses to handle any onslaught.

Virus illnesses and deaths are still overwhelmingly concentrated in cities and suburbs, and new rural cases have not exploded at the same rate as in some cities. But they are growing fast. This week, the case rate in rural areas was more than double what it was six days earlier.

The S&P 500 is up 23 percent from its March low.

Wall Street resumed its rally on Wednesday. With a more than 3 percent gain, the S&P 500 is now up about 23 percent from its March 23 low.

The market has been steadily climbing since it hit that bottom, a rebound that began after the Federal Reserve and lawmakers in Washington took unprecedented steps to protect the world’s largest economy from a collapse amid the pandemic. Stocks are still down about 19 percent from their late February high.

To some extent, the recent gains reflect Wall Street’s fear of missing out on the rebound that many analysts predicted would eventually come.

“If you wait until the coast is clear you will have missed a huge part of the gains,” said Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak a trading and asset management firm. “And professional investors can’t afford to do that.”

For now, though, it is big money managers — not mom-and-pop retail investors — who are in on the action. Hedge fund traders and mutual fund managers have swooped into the market, driving sharp gains for blue-chip shares that have been battered by the market sell-off.

Still, the market’s recent optimism is set against a grim backdrop of economic and human catastrophe that continues to play out — and which threatens to undercut any rally at a moments notice.

In Europe, data released on Wednesday showed that Germany and France, the largest economies in the region, were heading toward their sharpest downturns since World War II. And European Union leaders on Tuesday night failed to agree on financial tools to help countries in the bloc struggling with the pandemic. Shares in Europe mostly ended lower on Wednesday.

There’s more data to come. A new report on weekly jobless claims on Thursday is certain to show millions more Americans are out of work. The two prior reports recorded more than 10 million claims for unemployment in late March.

Time is of the essence for disinfecting your home and hands.

You’ve been cleaning your home and washing your hands all these years, and probably never stopped to consider whether you were doing it effectively. But time matters when it comes to fully disinfecting your household surfaces and your skin.

In the case of some disinfectants, it can take up to 10 minutes for them to fully work. As for your hands? Scrubbing for a full 20 seconds is the way to go.

Food banks in the U.S. are being squeezed by rising hunger and dwindling resources.

Demand for food assistance in the United States is rising at an unprecedented rate, as millions of Americans find themselves out of work and school closures mean that many families who counted on them for free or subsidized meals need to turn elsewhere.

The surge in need is coming just as food banks face shortages of both donated food and volunteer workers.

It’s a nationwide phenomena:

• At Food Bank for the Heartland in Omaha, the amount of food donated for March dropped by nearly half. The food bank typically purchases $73,000 of food in a month this time of year but has spent $675,000 in the past four weeks.

• In Washington State and Louisiana, the National Guard has been called in to help pack food boxes and ensure that the distributions run smoothly.

• Feeding America, the nation’s largest network of food banks, with more than 200 affiliates, has projected a $1.4 billion shortfall in the next six months alone.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Stacy Dean, vice president for food assistance policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning research organization in Washington, D.C. She has studied food security for more than a quarter century. “People love the phrase ‘the perfect storm,’” she added, “but nothing is built for this.”

Boris Johnson is “responding to treatment” while he’s in intensive care.

And here’s what else is happening in the global fight against the virus: As many as 150 royals inside Saudi Arabia are believed to have contracted it, including members of the family’s lesser branches, according to a person close to the family.

Passover will be different this year.

For generations Jewish families have gathered for the first night of Passover to recount the 10 plagues from the Book of Exodus — frogs, pestilence, death — and to remember how God delivered the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt thousands of years ago.

Jews observed the Seder in the fifth century B.C. on the Egyptian island of Elephantine, and they observed it in 1943 as German troops liquidated the Warsaw ghetto. And on Wednesday in homes across the United States, families will once again light candles at the Seder table and ask why this night is different from all other nights.

Of course, with a literal plague in their midst, families cannot meet in person this year and may even tweak their Haggadahs — the text that is annually read aloud — to reflect the moment. But the power of Passover remains, perhaps even more so as a symbol of perseverance.

The Times asked families around the country to share reflections on the Passover story in this moment. Their words speak to the power of memory, the meaning of plague, and how crockpots and cookbooks can connect us with loved ones of generations past and future.

Reporting was contributed by Alan Blinder, Eileen Sullivan, Michael Cooper, Jonah Engel Bromwich, Elizabeth Dias, Caitlin Dickerson, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Andy Newman, Jack Nicas, Stacy Cowley, Colin Moynihan, J. David Goodman, Jack Healy, Sabrina Tavernise, Robert Gebeloff, Weiyi Cai, Adeel Hassan, David E. Sanger, Emily Cochrane, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Conor Dougherty, Marc Santora, Dan Levin, Matt Stevens, Charlie Savage, Peter Baker, Timothy Williams, Danielle Ivory, William Grimes, Lisa Friedman, Julia Echikson, Patricia Mazzei, Nicholas Kulish, John Eligon, Audra D. S. Burch, Dionne Searcey, Richard A. Oppel Jr., Vanessa Swales, Nicholas Fandos and Anemona Hartocollis.