Coronavirus Live Updates: Governments Struggle to Cope as Anxiety Rises

The spread of the virus poses challenges around the world.

From the snowy peaks of the Alps to the sun-drenched shores of Sicily, Italians woke up on Tuesday to the stark new reality of a nationwide lockdown.

The sweeping order to impose severe travel limits across the whole country, announced on Monday by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte in a prime-time news conference, was the latest escalation in Italy’s fight to slow the spread of the coronavirus, which is causing broad social and economic disruption around the globe.

With the announcement that Cyprus had confirmed two infections, every country in the European Union has now reported cases of the virus. But the approaches to slowing the spread varied widely from nation to nation.

In the United States, Wall Street suffered its worst day in more than a decade on Monday, adding to losses in recent weeks that have evaporated some $5 trillion in stock market wealth. But European markets on Tuesday morning showed signs of stabilizing, and Wall Street futures were also pointing to a rebound.

President Trump is expected to unveil measures today intended to provide a stimulus to the economy, among them possibly a cut in payroll taxes to provide some form of relief to people who live paycheck to paycheck and for whom taking time off work because of illness — or to monitor possible exposure to the virus — could mean financial ruin.

Investors’ perceptions that the Trump administration was bungling efforts to combat the virus have fed fears that the American economy will tilt into recession, added to the deepening sense of anxiety worldwide.

More than 114,000 cases of infection have been reported globally, and more than 4,000 people have died. But the numbers tell only a slice of the story.

Fear and anxiety have outpaced the immediate danger.

The speed with which the virus is spreading has left public health officials rushing to catch up.

New York State announced its first cases only a week ago. Now, with more than 140 confirmed cases, thousands find themselves under “self-isolation orders” — often with little guidance as to what that means.

Hospitals across the United States have already reported shortages of a crucial type of respirator mask.

Nationally, there were over 700 confirmed cases, but officials cautioned that the number was likely to be higher, as delays in testing have slowed efforts to get a more complete picture.

In the scramble to take precautionary measures, cases of infection left offices empty — including NATO headquarters in Brussels and communal work spaces in Silicon Valley, Calif. — as workers were told to stay home. Central Seattle was a ghost town.

Spain, which has more than 1,600 cases, announced that schools in the Madrid area would be closed, adding 1.2 million children to the 300 million whose education has already been disrupted worldwide.

The list of events being canceled also grows daily, with the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin joining scores of concerts, book fairs and business conferences.

But the global count of at least 114,000 cases also includes more than 64,000 people who have recovered, according to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. In China, where the virus was first detected late last year, the number of new infections continued to dwindle.

President Xi Jinping sought to demonstrate how the country was recovering by visiting the hardest hit city, Wuhan.

But the real test will come when the travel restrictions are lifted in the region. Only then will it be clear whether China has managed to get control over the spread of the virus or simply earned a temporary reprieve.

As the virus hits Europe, a variety of strategies are used to slow the spread.

The coronavirus is now present in every country in the European Union, health officials said on Tuesday.

France and Spain continued to see the biggest surge in new infections, with each now confirming over 1,600 infections. Germany was not far behind, with nearly 1,200 as of Monday. But the measures taken by the bloc’s member states to contain the virus varied from country to country, often with little relation to the actual size of the outbreaks.

The Czech Republic, with 41 cases, announced that all schools aside from universities would close, starting Wednesday.

“We may decide on additional emergency measures later,” Prime Minister Andrej Babis said in a statement on Tuesday. “It is necessary to take active, exceptional measures at the start of an epidemic,” he added.

The Spanish government stepped up its efforts to contain further contagion by closing all education centers in the Madrid region, from nursery schools to universities.

The measure means that more than 1.25 million pupils and students will have to stay at home.

In Poland, schools in Poznan, a city in the west of the country, were ordered closed after a single case of infection was discovered. Swimming pools and other public places were also to be shut for two weeks.

Across the Continent, countries also increased travel regulations and guidelines.

Austria barred travelers from Italy without a health certificate, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said. Switzerland was considering a similar measure.

Serbia has temporarily barred travelers from the worst-affected places, including Italy, while Croatian officials said that people entering the country from “highly infected areas” would be put into a mandatory 14-day quarantine.

The authorities in France, where 30 people have died and more than 1,600 had been infected by Tuesday, was resisting taking the kind of sweeping preventive measures seen in Italy or Japan.

“We are only at the beginning of this epidemic,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said on Tuesday after visiting an emergency call center in Paris. “We have anticipated, we have prepared ourselves.”

From a port in California to Columbia University in New York City, a sense of crisis grows in the U.S.

Passengers aboard the Grand Princess, the cruise ship stranded for days off California and now docked at the Port of Oakland, were expected to start disembarking on Tuesday.

They will be met by workers in protective gear who have been preparing a large-scale quarantine operation for the 21 people infected with the coronavirus, along with the thousands of other passengers. The crew will remain onboard and the ship will head back to sea while they complete a 14-day quarantine.

The outbreak on the ship was just one of many fronts in the battle to slow the spread of virus across the United States.

Schools were shut down, major universities have canceled in-person classes, and companies across the country were asking employees to work from home.

Known cases of coronavirus in the United States surged past 700, and Monday was the seventh consecutive day with more diagnoses than the previous day.

On Tuesday, the Fulton County school system, which covers the suburbs of Atlanta, became the largest U.S. school district to close after an employee tested positive for the virus. Schools in Snohomish County, near the center of the crisis in Washington State, were also closed after an employee in the transportation department tested positive.

Harvard College became the latest major university to move to remote classes on Tuesday, in an announcement that urged students not to return to campus after spring break. Amherst College, a private liberal arts school in Massachusetts, took precautions even further, ordering all students to leave campus by next week, unless they receive special permission to stay.

The disruptions echo significant changes to American life taking place from coast to coast. In California, which is experiencing a significant outbreak, officials in Santa Clara County escalated their recommendations to limit mass gatherings and ordered a mandatory ban, starting Wednesday at midnight.

Investors nervously return to the market after Wall Street rout.

Buyers moved back into the markets on Tuesday, a day after the coronavirus and a battle among the world’s biggest oil producers shook the global financial scene.

On Wall Street, the S&P 500 rose more than 3 percent, rebounding from its steepest decline in more than a decade. European stocks also climbed, with many indexes more than 2 percent higher, and Asian markets rose as well.

Stocks were somewhat buoyed after President Trump on Monday night said he would work with Congress on measures to help the economy amid signs of a worsening outbreak in the United States. But the gains did not come close to making up for the global plunge on Monday.

The S&P 500 fell nearly 8 percent on Monday, its sharpest daily decline since December 2008. In Asia and Europe on Monday, some of the biggest financial exchanges flirted with, or crossed into, bear market territory.

Investors still showed plenty of signs of nervousness on Tuesday. Yields on U.S. government debt rose slightly but remained close to record lows.

The price of oil, which had slumped by a quarter on Monday, rose more than 7 percent on Tuesday, with futures tracking the price of Brent crude trading at about $36.85 a barrel.

Life locked down in Italy: the morning after.

The grand piazzas are empty. The traffic circles are quiet. And people who would normally be sipping their morning espresso in cafes from Milan to Rome are notably absent.

Late Monday, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte ordered the most severe nationwide limits on travel in Europe, adopting the playbook used by China to contain the virus.

Such draconian measures will undoubtedly prove complicated in a society that prizes individual freedom. But with more than 9,000 cases of infection and nearly 500 deaths, drastic action was needed, Mr. Conte said.

Travel was allowed for work, for health reasons and for trips to buy food and other supplies. But the police can impose penalties if the rules are broken.

The Italian news agency ANSA reported on lines of up to an hour to enter supermarkets in Naples on Tuesday morning, with problems exacerbated by the mandate that people stand about three feet apart.

The Italian national health system geared for an upsurge in critical cases, and the national procurement agency moved to buy equipment for thousands of new intensive-care beds.

Laura Castelli, deputy economy minister, told a radio program that payments on mortgages “for individuals and households” would be suspended throughout Italy. The measure is likely to be part of a fiscal package to bolster the economy that the government is expected to discuss further on Wednesday.

U.K. says extreme measures may be needed, just not yet.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain has so far resisted imposing the sort of draconian restrictions on travel, school openings or mass gatherings that other European countries have introduced as the coronavirus has taken hold.

Mr. Johnson and his advisers argue that putting in place “social distancing measures” while the outbreak is still in its early stages could have downsides.

“There is a risk if we go too early, people will understandably get fatigued and it will be difficult to sustain this over time,” Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, said.

Many experts agree that some measures shunned by Britain, like screening airport travelers for a fever, are of limited use: Hand-held thermometers are unreliable, sick travelers can take temperature-reducing drugs and checks do not catch people still in the incubation phase.

“I think that’s a bit of a red herring,” said Jonathan Ball, a professor of virology at the University of Nottingham, referring to such tests. “You either stop flights, or you acknowledge the fact that someone coming into the country could be infected.”

Measures like school shutdowns and work-from-home policies have shown evidence of ending the winter flu season early in Hong Kong, a sign that they could slow the spread of the coronavirus, too, experts have said.

Travel restrictions, on the other hand, may be less effective. Researchers have found that even strong curbs on travelers from China “only modestly affect the epidemic trajectory” unless they are combined with public health measures and behavioral changes that significantly reduce person-to-person transmission in a country.

Concern grows for the homeless in America.

Medical researchers say the 550,000 people currently homeless across the United States are more susceptible to contracting the disease caused by the coronavirus because of the cramped quarters in shelters, the sharing of utensils and the lack of hand-washing stations on the streets.

Chronically homeless people often have underlying medical conditions and lack reliable health care, meaning that, once infected, they are far more likely to get very sick or die. One study last year found that 30 percent of homeless people had chronic lung disease.

“We should be very worried,” said Dr. Helen Chu, an infectious disease specialist in Seattle, which has high rates of homelessness. So far, none of the more than 100 confirmed cases in Washington State have been among the homeless population.

Several cities in California have large homeless populations that are vulnerable to an outbreak, as do Austin, Texas; Phoenix; Portland, Ore.; and Washington D.C. Officials in New York City, which has the largest homeless population in the country, issued an 11-page document instructing shelters to screen people for symptoms and to quickly identify and isolate those who had contracted the virus “as much as possible.”

Under a single tent in downtown San Diego, one shelter sleeps more than 300 people, a majority of them older than 50. Numbered bunk beds are spaced just two feet apart.

“We’re just saying our prayers,” said Bob McElroy, the head of the shelter. “If it gets in here, it would be a disaster.”

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, visits Wuhan for the first time.

The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, toured Wuhan on Tuesday, visiting the center of the global coronavirus epidemic for the first time since the outbreak began and sending a powerful signal that the government believes the worst of the national emergency is over.

Wearing a blue mask, Mr. Xi stopped short of declaring victory, but his visit to Wuhan was clearly intended to send a powerful signal that the government believes the worst of the national emergency could soon be over in China — just as others countries are being struck by their own outbreaks.

As if to echo the message, some cities, even in surrounding province of Hubei, announced plans to loosen some of the most onerous limits imposed on millions of people.

Mr. Xi flew into Wuhan in the morning and raced through several sites in the deeply traumatized city of 11 million people who have remained largely under lockdown for nearly seven weeks. The city and surrounding province of Hubei have accounted for all but 112 of the 3,136 deaths in mainland China.

“Hubei and Wuhan have been the very most decisive battleground in this struggle to contain the epidemic,” Mr. Xi said, according to an account of his remarks from Xinhua, the official news agency. “Through arduous efforts, there’s been a promising turn in epidemic containment in Hubei and Wuhan, and we’ve achieved important interim results. But the tasks of containment remain arduous and heavy.”

As testing ramps up in the U.S., a drive-through option.

Drive-through testing facilities — pioneered in South Korea — have popped up across the United States to supplement hospitals’ efforts.

In Lebanon, N.H., a mobile medical truck was set up in an airport hangar last week to provide tests for people who might have come into contact with two hospital employees who recently tested positive for the coronavirus, Valley News, a local newspaper, reported.

The University of Washington School of Medicine also set up a drive-through clinic last week to test for the coronavirus, which has caused at least 20 deaths and dozens of infections in the Seattle area. The university has turned one of its hospital garages into a clinic that allows people with ties to the university to get tested without leaving their cars.

“This is a totally new concept, which came out of a meeting discussing the ways to safely test patients rapidly and to make it convenient for the patients,” said Dr. Seth Cohen, the medical director of infection prevention and employee health at Northwest Hospital in Seattle. “We’re conducting widespread testing to keep staff healthy and make sure not to spread to vulnerable patients.”

The testing clinic serves 40 to 50 staff members per day who have symptoms of the coronavirus, including a dry cough, fever or shortness of breath. They are tested for Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, as well influenza A and B and R.S.V., a common respiratory virus that usually causes coldlike symptoms.

Dr. Cohen said that academic and medical institutions across the country had reached out to his team to learn more about the drive-through clinics. They can reduce interactions between potentially infected people and health care workers and are considered a much faster method of testing. At the Seattle clinic, someone can be tested every five minutes, and results are produced within 24 hours.

Reporting and research was contributed by Alissa J. Rubin, Elisabetta Povoledo, Vanessa Swales, Iliana Magra, Raphael Minder, Constant Méheut, Joanna Berendt, Jason M. Bailey, Marc Santora, Jason Horowitz, Jorge Arangure, Jan Hoffman, Peter S. Goodman, Clifford Krauss, Claire Fu, Elsie Chen, Choe Sang-Hun, Maria Abi-Habib, Amber Wang and Zoe Mou.