Coronavirus Live Updates: Business Executives Call for More Testing; Trump’s W.H.O. Attack Is Condemned

Trump’s move to freeze aid to the W.H.O. draws condemnation.

President Trump’s public campaign against the World Health Organization — and his order to freeze all money to the group in the middle of a pandemic — is the culmination of mounting anger among his White House advisers, Republican lawmakers and conservative news media about the organization’s lavish praise of China’s response to the coronavirus.

Mr. Trump’s decision to attack the W.H.O., a unit of the United Nations, comes as he is under intense fire at home for his administration’s failure to respond aggressively to the virus, which as of Wednesday had claimed more than 25,000 lives in the United States and infected at least 600,000 people in all 50 states.

The director general of the organization on Wednesday expressed dismay that Mr. Trump was calling to halt its funding as it fights the pandemic.

“W.H.O. is not only fighting Covid-19,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “We’re also working to address polio, measles, malaria, Ebola, H.I.V., tuberculosis, malnutrition, cancer, diabetes, mental health and many other diseases and conditions.”

Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, praised the organization on Wednesday in tones at odds with the president’s harsh criticism. He told “CBS This Morning” that questions about the W.H.O.’s pandemic response should be left until “after we get through this.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi sharply denounced Mr. Trump’s call to halt funding, promising on Wednesday to “swiftly challenge” the move and calling it “dangerous” and “illegal.”

“As he has since Day 1, the president is ignoring global health experts, disregarding science and undermining the heroes fighting on the front line, at great risk to the lives and livelihoods of Americans and people around the world,” she said in a statement. “This is another case, as I have said, of the president’s ineffective response, that ‘a weak person, a poor leader, takes no responsibility. A weak person blames others.’”

Congress had already appropriated funding to the organization, but the Trump administration has previously diverted allocated funds to other programs without the legislative branch signing off. Democrats on Capitol Hill criticized the W.H.O. announcement, arguing that it needed the nation’s support now more than ever.

The president’s decision came amid concerns about the W.H.O.’s approach to China. Inside the West Wing, officials said, there was near-unanimous agreement among the president’s advisers that the W.H.O. was heavily influenced by the Chinese government and too slow to sound the alarm because it trusted China’s assurances that the virus was under control and did not pose a global threat.

That belief has been amplified by some of the president’s top allies in Congress and the right-wing news media, who share deep suspicions about the Chinese government and were furious when W.H.O. officials said aggressive action by China was crucial to slowing the spread of the virus outside its borders.

The “War Room” podcast featuring Steve Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist, and Jason Miller, his former campaign communications director, called a week ago for an end to funding for the W.H.O., citing what they said was China’s delay in providing truthful information about the virus.

The Fox News Channel has published 49 articles about the W.H.O. on its website since mid-February, and the cable network has repeatedly featured Republican lawmakers and conservative pundits railing against the W.H.O. for being too deferential to China. Mr. Trump echoed that sentiment on Tuesday, when he announced that he would freeze nearly $500 million in funding for the organization.

A top W.H.O. official said in mid-February that restrictive measures adopted by China had delayed the spread of the virus to other countries, saying, “Right now, the strategic and tactical approach in China is the correct one.”

“It is very China-centric,” Mr. Trump told reporters during a briefing in the Rose Garden. “I told that to President Xi. I said, ‘The World Health Organization is very China-centric.’ Meaning, whatever it is, China was always right. You can’t do that. You can’t do that. Not right.”

Many of the president’s closest aides — including Peter Navarro, his trade adviser — and key members of the National Security Council have long been suspicious of China. Mr. Trump himself has often offered contradictory messages about the country, repeatedly complimenting President Xi Jinping even as he wages a fierce, on-again, off-again trade war.

On Jan. 24, about a month after the virus was discovered there, Mr. Trump tweeted: “China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency.”

But White House officials said that even the public health officials dealing with the pandemic were in agreement that the W.H.O. had been too cozy with China’s government during the crisis.

The president on Friday attended a meeting of his virus task force and polled all of the doctors in the room about the W. H.O., according to an official who attended the meeting. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said the W.H.O. had a “China problem,” and then others in the room — including Dr. Deborah Birx, who is coordinating the U.S. response, and Dr. Redfield — agreed with the statement, the official said.

“They explained how the organization is structured and that each region governs itself basically,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private meeting. “It does have some successful areas, but China is clearly a problem, and they said it has been for a long time.”

But Dr. Redfield said Wednesday morning that the W.H.O. remained “a longstanding partner for the C.D.C.,” citing continuing efforts to fight Ebola in Africa and cooperation to limit the spread of the coronavirus. He said the United States and the W.H.O. had “worked together to fight health crises around the world. We continue to do that.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said that it supported an overhaul of the W.H.O. but added that “cutting the W.H.O.’s funding during the Covid-19 pandemic is not in U.S. interests given the organization’s critical role assisting other countries — particularly in the developing world — in their response.”

Former President Jimmy Carter said he was “distressed” by Mr. Trump’s decision. “W.H.O. is the only international organization capable of leading the effort to control this virus,” Mr. Carter said in a statement on Wednesday.

On a call with Trump about reopening, business executives call for more testing.

When the first conference call of President Trump’s economic advisory council on reopening the economy was held Wednesday morning, several business executives echoed a cry that health officials and state and local leaders have been making for weeks, according to two participants: The country needs more testing.

During the call with business leaders from retail, banking, financial services, hospitality and other industries, each executive was given a minute or two to provide his or her overview of what was needed to reopen the economy, according to the participants, who were granted anonymity to describe private communications. There appeared to be a wide consensus that more virus testing was needed to track who was infected and who might have immunity before employees could return to work.

But another issue of great concern to the executives on the call, one of the participants said, was the need to address the liability companies could face if employees were to get sick after returning to work. Workers who felt that they were brought back too soon or were not placed in an adequately safe environment could sue en masse. Details of the call were first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Some executives were unable to join the call because of scheduling conflicts. David M. Solomon, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, who was leading his own quarterly earnings call at the same time as the White House call, was one of them.

In an indication of his own viewpoint, Mr. Solomon — who noted during his earnings call that he had spoken to about 100 chief executives who were Goldman clients about the effects of the virus — said that “we have to rebuild confidence in people’s security and safety around the virus,” and that “unless people feel safe and secure and confident around the virus, the economic impact will continue in some way, shape or form.”

The White House began notifying members of Congress on Wednesday afternoon that they had been selected to serve on another task force to advise Mr. Trump on reopening the country. This one would be composed of Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate.

In emails sent to offices on Capitol Hill, the White House Legislative Affairs Office did not so much invite the lawmakers — numbering at least a dozen — to participate in the task force as inform them that they were expected to serve.

Senate Democrats on Wednesday unveiled a $30 billion plan to vastly ramp up the development, manufacturing and distribution of testing across the country, saying they would push to include it in the next round of government relief.

Democrats said the national blueprint, which would include free testing and reporting mechanisms for testing and tracing, would be essential to eventually reopening the country.

“Each state can’t have its own separate plan,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, said in a telephone news conference with reporters. “We need a national plan.”

The proposal would require the Trump administration to develop and enforce a national strategy to expand the country’s testing capacity and develop tests, and mandate widespread reporting about testing results, including tracking the demographics of people who tested positive.

It comes as the lack of testing capacity has emerged as a signature failure of the Trump administration’s response and now threatens to hamper efforts across the country to plan for an eventual reopening of the economy. The issue is likely to emerge as yet another flash point for debate as Democrats and Republicans negotiate a fourth sweeping aid package to respond to the crisis.

In California, officials say ramping up testing is a major priority before they can begin lifting stay-at-home orders there. Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles announced Tuesday that anyone with symptoms could get a test in one day.

The state’s rate of infection and the number of deaths have been substantially lower than rates in other areas, but testing has been slower there than in New York, according to The Covid-19 Tracking Project.

At-home versions of the SAT and ACT are being developed for high schoolers for the fall.

Millions of high school students across the country will be able to take at-home, digital versions of the SAT and ACT, the widely used standardized tests for college admissions, if the pandemic forces schools to remain closed in the fall.

The College Board, which administers the SAT, gave few details in an announcement on Wednesday about what the at-home test would look like or how it would differ from the traditional test, which is normally taken on paper in a highly secure setting under the watchful eyes of proctors.

The organization has already announced that it will administer Advanced Placement tests at home in May because of the virus, which forced the cancellation of SAT testing dates this spring, including into June, The College Board said on Wednesday. The A.P. tests — a kind of dress rehearsal for the fall — will be open book and truncated to 45 minutes from about three hours. The College Board’s counterpart, the ACT, also said Wednesday that it would offer an at-home option.

The proposal for at-home testing is an implicit admission that the pandemic is threatening the industry’s test delivery and business model. Over the last month, a growing number of colleges have announced that they will suspend the requirement for applicants to submit standardized test results because of the disruption caused by the virus, accelerating a trend that was already taking place.

Standardized tests have been widely criticized for exacerbating economic inequality. Critics say they penalize children from poor families who have less access to practice tests, preparation materials and tutors to help raise their scores — and that at-home options would make accessibility worse.

“It’s different if you’re taking the test in a one-room apartment with 17 relatives in the background,” said Akil Bello, a senior director at FairTest, an organization that opposes the use of standardized tests in college admissions.

The College Board, a nonprofit that brings in more than $1 billion in revenue a year, said in a statement on Wednesday that it would strive to make the SAT “accessible to all,” acknowledging that “families hit hardest are often those with the fewest resources.” But it did not specify how it planned to address those disparities.

Universities have seen major financial losses after closing down their campuses to stop the spread of the virus. Many are anticipating a significant enrollment drop in the fall, especially from foreign students, who usually pay full tuition and help keep schools afloat.

Some institutions are projecting $100 million losses for the spring, and many are now bracing for an even bigger financial hit in the fall, when some are planning for the possibility of continuing remote classes. The universities anticipate that many students will choose not to return for online learning or may need to take a gap year or choose less expensive educational options amid widespread unemployment. A higher education trade group has predicted a 15 percent drop in enrollment nationwide.

Cuomo will require New Yorkers to wear facial coverings.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said Wednesday that he would order people statewide to don facial coverings while in public if they were unable to stay six feet away from others. The measure will take effect on Saturday.

“If you’re going to be in public and you cannot maintain social distancing, then have a mask and put the mask on,” said Mr. Cuomo, who held out the possibility of civil penalties for violations.

The C.D.C. recommends that people wear cloth face coverings to prevent transmission of the virus, which primarily spreads through droplets generated when, for instance, an infected person coughs or sneezes. The recommendation, which is intended to protect not those covering their faces but those around them, came after research showed that many people were infected but did not show symptoms. (Public health officials have warned against buying or hoarding the N95 masks needed by health care workers.)

Health officials have urged people to combine face coverings with adhering to social-distancing rules, suggesting that one tactic did not replace the need for the other. Further complicating the matter, scientists agree that while six feet is a sensible and useful minimum distance for people to separate when possible, some say that farther away would be better.

Sneezes, for instance, can propel droplets a lot farther than six feet, according to a recent study, and as a Times 3-D simulation shows.

Earlier Wednesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that New York City grocery stores should begin to require customers to wear face coverings to enter. But Mr. Cuomo’s action went further, and a spokeswoman for the governor said his order was the “next logical step” building on the mayor’s move.

Mr. Cuomo’s announcement came soon after he said that the virus had killed at least 752 people in New York on Tuesday, swelling the state’s official death toll to at least 11,586.

The state government’s tally does not include the more than 3,700 people in New York City who died without being tested and are now presumed to have died of the virus. The state’s fatality count could change, Mr. Cuomo cautioned, as officials worked with nursing homes and other facilities to tally the number of deaths that could be traced to the pandemic.

With testing capacity still under strain nationwide, Mr. Cuomo noted that the states could not be expected to develop a coast-to-coast system. But he said New York officials were seeking federal approval for a test that could allow for screening 100,000 people a day.

Mr. Cuomo also outlined for the first time the criteria that would be used in deciding which businesses to reopen. There were two factors, he said: how essential a business was and what the risk was of a particular business spreading infection.

But with intubations and total hospitalizations inching downward, Mr. Cuomo suggested anew that the state’s situation, while perilous, was improving.

“We’re still in the woods,” the governor said. “The good news is we showed we can change the curve.”

Earlier in the day, Mr. de Blasio said that the outbreak and the shutdown had cost New York City $5 billion to $10 billion. He also said the city would spend $170 million over the next four months to get food to affected residents.

Demonstrators in Michigan, in their cars, protest the governor’s social distancing orders.

Thousands of demonstrators, who remained mostly in vehicles, on Wednesday surrounded the State Capitol in Lansing, Mich., accusing Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of going too far with stay-at-home orders.

The orders by Ms. Whitmer, a Democrat, are among the strictest in the nation, barring residents from crossing the street to visit neighbors or driving to see friends.

The organizers of the demonstration, the Michigan Conservative Coalition and the Michigan Freedom Fund, had asked protesters to honk horns and to display flags and signs. Given the risk of viral transmission when assembling in a crowd, they cautioned drivers not to leave their cars for what they called “Operation Gridlock.”

But as the sound of car horns filled the air and signs and banners proclaimed “Live Free or Die,” “Make Michigan Work Again” and “We Deem Our Governor Non-Essential,” a few dozen people protested on foot, most of them maskless, in front of the statehouse.

From the top of the steps, they chanted “freedom, freedom, freedom,” waving American flags and at least one “Trump 2020” flag. Earlier, the state police had said that there would be very little enforcement action unless they saw a threat of violence.

Denny Bradley, 33, told the Detroit News that he was the sole breadwinner for his family and that his employer, an auto supplier, had been shut down for three weeks. He carried a sign that read, “I want to work.”

Michigan has recorded about 27,000 cases of the coronavirus and more than 1,700 deaths. Ms. Whitmer has said the state must stay the course with its decision to close businesses and restrict movement.

Other states have also seen protests in recent days. A demonstration on Tuesday in Raleigh, N.C., resulted in arrests of protesters, some of whom were standing close to one another and carrying signs that said “Reopen N.C.” In Columbus, Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine said last week that he could hear protesters chanting their opposition to his stay-at-home orders, and that he understood their frustration and supported their right to protest.

A small-business loan program could run dry imminently amid a stalemate in Congress.

Funding for the Paycheck Protection Program, an initiative created by the $2.2 trillion stimulus law to help small businesses weather the crisis, could run out as early as Wednesday night, amid a standoff in Congress over replenishing it.

“Now 700,000 small business applications are in limbo & no new loans will be made until the game of chicken in Congress ends & additional $ approved,” Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, wrote on Twitter. “Inexcusable.”

As of early Wednesday afternoon, more than 1.3 million loans had been approved at a value of close to $300 billion, according to a person with knowledge of the numbers.

But congressional leaders and the Trump administration have failed to reach agreement on adding hundreds of billions of dollars to replenish the program, hamstrung by a dispute over whether to implement sweeping changes to how it allocates loans to businesses across the country.

The desperate situation reflects the fitful nature of the government’s efforts to carry out the hulking stimulus plan, a measure that was hastily negotiated by Congress and the administration as both faced intense pressure to respond to an extraordinary public health and economic catastrophe. Economists warned at the time that the package allocated too little for small businesses and ran the risk of steering too much of that money away from companies that needed it the most.

The small-business loan program — which enjoys broad bipartisan support — was among the first to be unveiled, and its introduction has been plagued with problems even as businesses have inundated banks with requests for a piece of the aid.

Administration officials and congressional Republicans have been pushing for a quick infusion of cash to keep the program going. But while they support the additional spending, Democrats have insisted on attaching new restrictions to ensure the money flows to minority-owned businesses and other companies that are traditionally disadvantaged in the lending market. They also want to add more money for hospitals, food-stamp recipients and state and local governments whose tax collections have plunged as their expenses mount.

Republicans have refused to do either, saying that policy debates and additional funding should be considered later in light of the program’s dire state. But Ms. Pelosi, the speaker, warned again on Wednesday that the Republican proposal would not pass the House, saying in a statement that it failed to address “critical issues.”

Mr. Schumer, the minority leader, spoke on Wednesday with Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, in an effort to restart talks, and their aides were to confer later in the day. But it is unclear if any agreement struck between Democrats and the administration would be palatable to Senate Republicans, particularly with lawmakers scheduled to remain in their respective districts and states until early May.

A retail report shows the biggest decline in sales in three decades.

Retail sales plunged in March as businesses shuttered from coast to coast and wary shoppers restricted their spending, a drop that was by far the largest in the nearly three decades the government has tracked the data.

Total sales, which include retail purchases in stores and online as well as auto and gasoline sales and money spent at bars and restaurants, fell 8.7 percent from the previous month, the Commerce Department said Wednesday.

The situation has almost certainly worsened since then. Most states didn’t shut down nonessential businesses until late March or early April.

What happens to retail matters to the broader economy. The sector accounts for more than one in 10 U.S. jobs; only health care employs more. Its stores generate billions of dollars in rent for commercial landlords, ad sales for local media outlets, and sales-tax receipts for state and local governments.

If retailers survive and can quickly reopen and rehire workers, then the eventual economic recovery could be relatively swift. But the failure of a large share of businesses would lead to prolonged unemployment and a much slower rebound.

But programs meant to support businesses, including government-backed loans and grants to keep businesses afloat, have gotten off to a rocky start.

“They need lifeboats, and the lifeboats aren’t getting out there fast enough,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton. “This is a time when speed matters more than bureaucracy.”

Facing the news about the plunge in retail and a slump in factory output, stocks tumbled on Wednesday, with the S&P 500 closing down more than 2 percent. Stocks in Europe were also lower, and Asia had a downbeat day.

The retreat came one day after the S&P 500 hit a one-month high. Stocks have been steadily climbing in recent weeks, with the occasional pullback, as investors have begun to focus on the prospect of an eventual rebound from the economic collapse prompted by the pandemic.

But they’ve also been confronted by a number of developments that highlight just how badly the economy is faring right now.

California will extend aid to undocumented workers.

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said on Wednesday that the state would extend aid to undocumented workers, many of whom harvest the fruits and vegetables Americans eat, care for the sick and build homes, but who have been unable to get federal relief during the pandemic.

“Ten percent of California’s work force is undocumented,” he said. “And many mixed-status families are having a hard time taking care of their own children, and taking care of you and your loved ones in skilled nursing facilities, on the job site, making sure your food is being procured and distributed.”

Undocumented workers, the governor noted, paid more than $2.5 billion in local and state taxes last year and are “quite literally putting themselves on the line” in the pandemic, since they are overrepresented in industries that have been deemed essential, such as food service, health care, construction, agriculture and logistics.

Mr. Newsom said that $75 million would come from the state’s disaster relief fund, and that a network of philanthropic organizations had committed to raise another $50 million.

Laurene Powell Jobs, the founder and president of Emerson Collective, which contributed to the fund, said in a statement: “With the federal government and so many states failing to provide undocumented immigrants the economic and health supports all Americans deserve, I hope that corporations, foundations and individuals across the country will join us in providing the emergency relief these members of our community need to weather this challenging time.”

In a news release, Mr. Newsom’s office said about 150,000 undocumented Californians would receive a one-time cash benefit of $500 per adult, with a household cap of $1,000, to address any needs related to the pandemic.

That $125 million sum is not enough, the governor said, “but it’s a good start.”

She worked in the emergency room, then caught the virus. Here are her last texts.

Lying in a hospital bed last month, Madhvi Aya understood what was happening to her.

She had been a doctor in India, then trained to become a physician assistant after she immigrated to the United States. She had worked for a dozen years at Woodhull Medical Center, a public hospital in Brooklyn, where she could see the coronavirus tearing through the city.

Within days of her last shift as a caregiver, Ms. Aya became a patient. She had worked in Woodhull’s understaffed emergency room, taking medical histories, ordering tests and asking about symptoms. Now she had become infected.

Ms. Aya, 61, was alone in a hospital, less than two miles from her husband and 18-year-old daughter on Long Island, who could not visit her. She did not have the solace of familiar colleagues; she had been admitted to a different facility closer to her home. In a text with her family, she described horrible chest pain from trying to get out of bed.

“I have not improved the way should have been,” she wrote her husband, Raj, on March 23.

As she grew sicker, her texts came less frequently and in short, sporadic bursts.

“I miss you mommy,” her daughter, Minnoli, wrote on March 25. She craved the reassurance of her mother’s hugs, the comfort of crawling into her bed. “Please don’t give up hope because I haven’t given up. I need my mommy. I need you to come back to me.”

“Love you,” Ms. Aya wrote the next day.

“Mom be back.”

Ms. Aya could not keep that promise.

As the U.S. weighs easing restrictions, Europe begins to experiment with several approaches.

Children in Denmark returned to school and day care on Wednesday after five weeks of closings, as the country began to ease its restrictive measures to curb the spread of the virus.

Denmark was one of a handful of European countries that have slowly and tentatively begun lifting constraints on daily life this week, providing an early litmus test of whether Western countries can gingerly restart their economies and restore basic freedoms without another round of infections.

Italy, the epicenter of Europe’s crisis, reopened some bookshops and children’s clothing stores on Tuesday. Spain allowed workers to return to factories and construction sites, despite a daily death toll that remains over 500. The Finnish government on Wednesday was set to reopen the borders of the southern region of Uusimaa, which includes Helsinki, the capital. The area has been sealed off since March 28.

In Moscow, new measures requiring anyone leaving their home to show a digital pass backfired, leaving subway stations clogged with throngs of rush-hour travelers waiting for police officers to check their papers.

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced Wednesday that there would be a gradual loosening of restrictions, with some small shops allowed to open starting Monday.

But Ms. Merkel cautioned that the lockdown would remain largely in place for an additional 20 days, along with strict social distancing rules banning contact among more than two people who were not from the same household. Schools would stay closed for another three weeks, the chancellor said.

Ms. Merkel said on Wednesday that testing capacities would be further increased with an aim to eventually “trace every single infection chain.”

After the numbers of new cases are reassessed at the end of April, other restrictions may be lifted if the number stays low. Starting with the higher grades, schools would be allowed to reopen gradually from May 4, as would larger stores. Restaurants and bars will have to wait longer, and large events like soccer matches remain banned until Aug. 31. Religious services will remain banned for now as well.

In Denmark, the slow return began as the number of hospital admissions remained far below capacity across the country. By Tuesday, 380 patients were being treated in Danish hospitals, down from 535 at the peak of the outbreak in the country on April 1.

“It’s better than we dared hope for,” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said at a news briefing on Tuesday.

If your family is breaking down, we can help.

There’s only so much togetherness anyone needs, and after a month of living together, your family most likely has had its share of rocky moments. We have some advice for problems such as navigating your stuck-together relationship and handling cooped-up children.

Reporting was contributed by Tim Arango, Karen Barrow, Alan Blinder, Jonah Engel Bromwich, Ben Casselman, Kenneth Chang, Emily Cochrane, Michael Cooper, Jill Cowan, Jesse Drucker, Catie Edmondson, John Eligon, Nicholas Fandos, Sheri Fink, Emily Flitter, James Gorman, Maggie Haberman, Anemona Hartocollis, Adeel Hassan, Annie Karni, Kate Kelly, Sapna Maheshwari, Aimee Ortiz, Alan Rappeport, William K. Rashbaum, Michael Rothfeld, Marc Santora, Michael D. Shear, Knvul Sheikh, Eileen Sullivan, Jim Tankersley and Sabrina Tavernise.