Coronavirus Live Updates: With Known U.S. Cases Surging Above 21,000, Pressure for Federal Aid Mounts

With climbing state caseloads, the federal government is under pressure.

The White House signaled Saturday that the economic stabilization package being negotiated on Capitol Hill could total between $1.3 trillion and $1.4 trillion, as the size of the measure grows amid negotiations with congressional Democrats and Republicans.

Larry Kudlow, President Trump’s top economic adviser, gave the estimate as senators in both parties began Saturday’s talks with administration officials to reach an agreement that the Senate could consider as soon as Monday.

“The package’s coming in at about 10 percent of G.D.P. — it’s a very large package,” Mr. Kudlow told reporters. He estimated that the total economic impact of the aid to Americans and distressed industries would ultimately be more than $2 trillion, although he did not offer a detailed breakdown. The Federal Reserve would play a crucial role in amplifying the effects of government aid, he said.

The machinations in Washington, including confusion over the size of the economic plan being discussed behind closed doors, came as tens of millions of Americans were under sweeping demands to stay home and as the nation’s caseload climbed past 21,000, intensifying pressure on Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly pledged swift action but whose promises have sometimes gone largely, or entirely, unrealized.

Some of the most strident demands for more aggressive action have come from officials in New York, which has become a hub of the crisis, with at least 5,683 cases and 43 deaths in New York City alone. The Trump administration has issued a major disaster declaration for the state, opening a spigot of billions of dollars in federal aid.

“With more and more cases confirmed in New York each day, it’s imperative that the federal government does everything within its power to support New York in the state effort to stem the spread of the deadly coronavirus,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said in a statement on Friday. “We’re at a vital point in the battle against the disease, and we need to do everything in our power to stop it, right here, right now.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York has been blunter: “I will only say to the president I don’t understand — and I think there are millions and tens of millions of Americans who don’t understand — what you are doing right now.”

Although New York’s doctors have seen waves of patients and expressed fears about their ability to respond, medical officials in other states have issued similarly dire predictions and warned of dwindling supplies of crucial gear, like protective equipment, and what they believe will be a vast demand for ventilators.

Mr. Trump has sent conflicting signals on how the federal government might solve the supply issues, and senior officials are expected to address reporters early Saturday afternoon amid a coast-to-coast reorientation of American life. Forty-five states have closed all of their schools, and bars and restaurants have been shuttered in many places as state and local governments banished large gatherings. Some of the most extreme measures are playing out in California, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey and New York, where people were told to stay mostly indoors as governments ordered, or planned to order, nonessential businesses closed.

And more travel restrictions have begun to take effect: The United States closed its borders to nonessential travelers from Canada and Mexico beginning at midnight on Saturday.

With Wall Street having shuddered its way through its worst week since the 2008 financial crisis, erasing the “Trump bump” — that is, moving the Dow below where it stood on the day before Mr. Trump was inaugurated — much of Washington’s attention turned Saturday to the bipartisan group of negotiators bargaining over how to aid industries seeking relief from the impact of the pandemic, assist small businesses, boost health care facilities and send direct aid to Americans.

With talks ongoing, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, has begun clearing procedural hurdles on the Senate floor in order to vote on a legislative package on Monday.

Steven T. Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, said he had spoken to Mr. Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Mr. Schumer about the emerging plan, and that he intended to talk with Speaker Nancy Pelosi later Saturday.

“Everybody’s working hard,” he said.

On the Senate floor, Mr. Schumer said the phone call with Mr. Mnuchin was “very good, very detailed.”

“I have every expectation that this progress will continue throughout the day,” he said. “We are all eager to come to a bipartisan agreement as soon as humanly possible.”

Governors set out new rules of life as strain builds in New York City’s hospitals.

The governors of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut on Friday told their residents to stay indoors as much as possible, issuing far-reaching demands that all nonessential workers must remain at home.

Both Govs. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Ned Lamont of Connecticut issued similar orders on Friday, while Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey said he planned to order on Saturday that all nonessential businesses in that state close as well.

The sweeping edicts were announced as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases jumped again on Friday, with New York State reporting nearly 8,000 cases. Most of them are in New York City, which now accounts for about one-third all cases in the United States.

Late Friday, officials reported 5,683 confirmed coronavirus cases in New York City and 43 deaths. Earlier in the day, officials had put the number of cases at 5,151 and the number of deaths at 29.

That startlingly quick ascent is thrusting the city’s medical system toward a crisis point, officials said. Doctors at Lincoln Hospital and Health Center in the Bronx said they have only a few remaining ventilators for patients. In Brooklyn, doctors at Kings County Hospital Center said they are reusing masks for up to a week, cleaning them as best they can with hand sanitizer between shifts.

On Saturday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said that the state was sending one million N95 masks to New York City and 500,000 to Long Island. The N95 mask filters out very small particles, protecting wearers from the virus.

103 American passengers remain stranded on the Silver Shadow cruise liner.

For more than a week, the 315 passengers aboard the Silver Shadow cruise liner were stuck in their cabins in Recife, Brazil, after a Canadian passenger fell ill and ultimately tested positive for the coronavirus.

The passengers received meals in their rooms and had their temperatures checked daily. No one else has gotten sick.

Over the past few days, most of the 18 countries with citizens aboard the Silver Shadow have chartered aircraft and flown their residents home from Brazil. Canadian travelers left the ship on Saturday, but 103 Americans remain stranded and afloat.

Ship personnel told the Americans they would be taken off the ship early Saturday and flown on a charter flight to Dallas, according to one American passenger. But that plan was canceled early Saturday without explanation.

“Luxembourg, Romania, Uruguay and even Italy have flown their citizens home, but not the United States,” the American passenger said in a phone call from the ship, adding that Mr. Trump’s “America First” mantra has become “America Last.” The passenger asked not to be identified out of fear of retribution from ship personnel.

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday.

The drum beat to delay the Tokyo Olympics gets louder.

In a showdown over public safety, the organizers of the Tokyo Olympics are facing a remarkable groundswell of criticism and pushback from their own athletes, fans and national Olympic officials, who are increasingly and unusually vocal in calling for a postponement.

On Saturday, U.S.A. Track & Field added its voice to the list of sports bodies asking for the Games to be delayed.

One of the biggest cracks in the usual solidarity behind the Games came Friday when U.S.A. Swimming, which governs the sport in the United States and regularly produces stars at the Games like Katie Ledecky and Simone Manuel, called for a postponement because of the growing obstacles to training as a result of practical restrictions imposed by the virus.

Those two sports typically account for the most medals won by the United States.

Without bold action, U.S. could be overwhelmed, researchers say.

Even if the United States cuts its rate of transmission in half — a tall order — some 650,000 people might become infected in the next two months.

That was the conclusion of Columbia University researchers who used a New York Times database of known cases and Census Bureau transportation data to model how the outbreak could evolve. The estimates are inherently uncertain, and they could change as the United States adopts additional measures to control the outbreak.

Blunders made months ago have caused worldwide testing disparities.

Experts now say that the decisive moment in halting the global spread of coronavirus, when aggressive testing might have allowed officials to stay ahead of the disease, passed more than a month ago.

Delays cannot be blamed on science. Researchers say a viral test is relatively easy to develop. Rather, scientists say, the chasm between the testing haves and have-nots reflects politics, public health strategies and blunders.

As the virus reached into the United States in late January, President Trump and his administration spent weeks playing down the potential for an outbreak. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention opted to develop its own test rather than rely on private laboratories or the World Health Organization.

The outbreak quickly outpaced Mr. Trump’s predictions, and the C.D.C.’s test kits turned out to be flawed, leaving the United States far behind other parts of the world.

Delhi’s international airport falls into chaos, crowding thousands of returning citizens together.

Delhi International Airport fell into chaos on Saturday, as Indians rushed back from abroad before the start of a flight ban, and officials kept thousands of people waiting for coronavirus screenings.

Images shared on social media showed tightly packed crowds with travelers bearing luggage and backpacks waiting to get the all clear.

India, the world’s second-most-populous nation, with 1.3 billion people, has appeared to be relatively unscathed by the outbreak, reporting a total of 256 cases as of Saturday, with four deaths. The country was one of the first nations to essentially shut its borders, canceling visas and denying entry to all but a select few foreigners.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged Indians to stay at home. About one fifth of India’s confirmed coronavirus cases are in the western state of Maharashtra, home to Mumbai. The state authorities on Friday ordered the closing of all shops and offices, apart from those providing essential services, until March 31.

That sent thousands of poor city migrants whose livelihoods have collapsed heading back to their villages on Saturday, raising fears that the exodus could carry the virus to the countryside, Reuters reported.

Hong Kong rushes to halt a new wave of infections.

Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, on Saturday ordered government employees to work from home again and postponed citywide college entrance exams, as the city grappled with a second wave of infections driven by residents returning from abroad.

The semiautonomous Chinese city has been held up as an example of successful outbreak control, holding its number of cases in the low hundreds.

“The epidemic triggered by cases imported from overseas is grimmer and more difficult to handle than any period over the past two months in Hong Kong’s anti-epidemic work, and could even lead to a large-scale and persistent community outbreak,” Mrs. Lam said at a news conference. “The entire medical system could be paralyzed.”

Returning to arrangements made when the epidemic first peaked in Hong Kong, civil servants who have recently returned to their offices will work from home again, while government-run sports centers, libraries and museums will shut their doors starting next week.

Mrs. Lam urged companies to allow their employees to work from home, just as social distancing practices began to relax in parts of the city.

Hong Kong’s grueling public school examinations will be pushed back until late April, while the oral components will be axed, officials said. Schools will remain closed until further notice.

Sending stern warnings to those subject to a compulsory self-quarantine, Mrs. Lam said the authorities planned to prosecute several people found to have violated home quarantine orders. Offenders face up to $3,220 in fines or six months in jail.

The Hong Kong health authorities earlier on Saturday admitted that laboratory staff had mixed up four test results by mistake and accidentally sent away two infected patients.

As Britain finally shuts its pubs, a London hospital sounds an alarm.

A large London hospital briefly declared that it was running out of critical care capacity as Britain ordered pubs, bars and restaurants closed, stiffening previously relaxed social distancing measures in the hope of stemming a surge in coronavirus cases before its National Health Service is overwhelmed.

London has become the epicenter of Britain’s coronavirus crisis, with about half of the confirmed cases in England, according to official figures.

The hospital, Northwick Park Hospital in the northwest of London, wrote to other nearby hospitals Thursday evening declaring a “critical incident,” according to the trade publication Health Service Journal, and seeking to transfer patients.

The move was “petrifying,” a manager at another London hospital told the publication, “given that we’re still in the low foothills of this virus.” On Friday, hospital officials said in a statement that “our critical incident status has been stood down.”

The government on Friday ordered bars, restaurants, cafes, gyms and other leisure facilities to close from that evening, and promised to pay 80 percent of wages, up to a limit of 2,500 pounds or just under $3,000 a month, for workers whom businesses sent home but kept on payroll.

The country’s top finance minister, Rishi Sunak, described the program as “unprecedented measures for unprecedented times.”

One part of the economy was still hiring rapidly, however: Supermarkets were seeking tens of thousands of temporary workers as they sought to cope with a surge in demand. Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, said British households had bought £1 billion in extra groceries over the past three weeks, as people have made panic purchases.

The country’s largest supermarket chain, Tesco, told the BBC it was seeking 20,000 temporary workers. British supermarkets are also beginning to set aside shopping time for health workers, as well as vulnerable people.

At a news briefing on Saturday, Stephen Powis, national medical director of N.H.S. England, cited a video of a nurse left tearful after finding empty shelves at the end of a late shift. He urged people to shop responsibly so that medical workers can buy essential goods after they finish work.

“It is critical,” he said, to leave supplies for others, too.

A German state offers a helping hand to France amid a surge in cases.

The governor of the German state of Baden-Wurttemberg, Winifred Kretschmann, has asked hospitals in his state to estimate capacity in their intensive care units, so that French patients in need of respirators from the heavily hit Alsace region can be transferred for treatment.

Germany has 25,000 intensive care beds with respirators, and the government is working to double that capacity in the face of a rising outbreak. The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the country has risen by 2,705 within a day to 16,662, the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases said on Saturday. It said a total of 47 people had died after testing positive, an increase of 16 from a tally of 31 published on Friday.

But several European countries were reporting still more worrying figures. Spain’s health ministry on Saturday reported a surge in the number of deaths from the coronavirus, to 1,326, amid 25,000 cases, a rise of about 25 percent in the number of cases from a day earlier.

The surge seemed to confirm the grim forecast made on Friday by Fernando Simón, the director of the national health emergency center, who warned, “The tough days are coming now.”

In the Madrid region, which has had 60 percent of the cases nationwide, hospitals are overflowing and facing equipment shortages. Officials ordered that a field hospital with about 5,500 beds be set up in the Spanish capital’s main exhibition center. In the Valencia region, three field hospitals have been added, with a combined 1,000 beds. Hotels have also been converted into hospitals in Madrid and Catalonia, where 122 people have died.

Italy reported 627 new coronavirus deaths on Friday, its highest number in a single day, pushing the death toll above 4,000.

In Germany, Baden-Wurttemberg, which has strong ties to France as a result of postwar reconciliation efforts, has the most infections of any state, with 3,668 people infected with the virus. But its intensive care wards are not yet full, unlike those in hospitals on the French side of the border.

“Governor Kretschmann has offered to help,” Markus Jox, a spokesman for the state health ministry, said in a telephone interview.

More than 350 patients are hospitalized across the border in France, the authorities there said, as the numbers of those infected continue to rise. As of Saturday, police are enforcing bans on entry into parks, forests or playgrounds in the region as authorities imposed more stringent restrictions in an effort to slow the spread of the virus.

In Germany, the authorities in the southern state of Bavaria issued an order asking people to stay indoors in most cases — the most far-reaching measure in the country so far.

Spain has imposed a nationwide lockdown that has been broadly respected, though about 350 people accused of violating the measure have been detained since it came into force last weekend.

The police announced on Saturday that its officers were reinforcing road checks to stop residents of the largest cities — Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia — from leaving for secondary homes. Heavy traffic was reported on the main roads leaving all three cities late Friday.

Colombia to join Argentina in nationwide lockdown; Costa Rica shuts parks.

Governments across Latin America are ordering large-scale closures and lockdowns to try to contain the virus, as anxiety and confirmed infections rise in a part of the world that has so far largely escaped the mass outbreaks unfolding elsewhere.

All of Colombia will be under lockdown starting Tuesday, days after Argentina began requiring residents to remain at home aside from visits to supermarkets, pharmacies, hospitals and other essential locations. Chile has closed all restaurants and movie theaters. Costa Rica’s national parks will close, officials announced Friday.

Most countries in Central and South America have recorded relatively few cases of the virus, compared with countries in Asia, Europe and North America. Brazil, with more than 900 cases, has the most; Chile and Ecuador each have more than 400.

But the region’s leaders signaled that existing measures directed at warding off the virus — including some travel restrictions and business closures — were not enough.

“In the next few weeks, we have the opportunity, collectively, to end the speed of the coronavirus,” Iván Duque, Colombia’s president, said in a televised address on Friday, describing the 19-day lockdown as “drastic but urgent.” The country’s capital, Bogotá, had already been under similar measures for several days.

As natural disasters strike, a new fear that relief shelters may spread the virus.

Do not pull your cots close together, the Red Cross is warning.

As the virus spreads and the United States rushes toward its annual season of natural disasters — floods, wildfires and hurricanes — disaster-response experts are scrambling to prevent their crowded, cot-filled disaster-relief shelters from further spreading the disease.

In a pandemic, this kind of shelter “is not the best environment,” said Trevor Riggen, senior vice president for disaster services for the Red Cross.

The rethinking of shelters, a fixture of disaster relief worldwide, comes as the nation’s crisis-response work force is already taxed by three years of brutal hurricanes, floods and wildfires, a trend that climate change promises to accelerate.

New guidelines from the American Red Cross call for taking the temperature of everyone entering shelters, whether evacuees or volunteers, and checking for other Covid-19 symptoms. Once inside, everyone is supposed to be checked three times a day. And keep the cots six feet apart.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is encouraging workers to “practice social distancing” and limiting to four the number of disaster victims who can be in one of its field offices at any time, a spokeswoman said Thursday. FEMA also said it would let states seek reimbursement for sheltering victims individually, for example in hotels.

The Red Cross, too, said it would try to use hotels.

However, in a disaster scenario, hotels themselves might be unusable because of the crisis, or not close enough. Even if available, it’s not always possible to find rooms for people pushed from their homes late at night.

“We don’t want to leave people standing out on the curb waiting,” Mr. Riggen said.

Israel’s first coronavirus death underscores the threat to nursing homes.

Israel reported its first coronavirus fatality late Friday: an 88-year-old man apparently infected by a social worker who visited the nursing home in Jerusalem where he lived, according to the authorities and news reports. The hospital where the man died said he had significant underlying illnesses.

Several other residents of the home appear to have contracted the virus from the same social worker, who caught it from a French tourist, news reports said. One of them, an 89-year-old woman, was in critical condition on Saturday.

The case reinforces the precarious situation of nursing homes in this pandemic. Amid the uncertainty swirling around the coronavirus stands an incontrovertible fact: The highest rate of fatalities is among older people, particularly those with underlying medical conditions.

The Israeli authorities have banned visits inside nursing homes. But isolation comes with its own costs.

There are at least 883 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Israel. The entire population of nine million people has been told to stay home, except when carrying out essential tasks like grocery shopping or seeking medical care.

Going to work is also still permitted, but companies face extensive restrictions about how many employees can operate in a shared space. All gatherings are limited to 10 people and tens of thousands of citizens are under home quarantine.

Trump promotes unproven drugs for potential use against the coronavirus.

At a White House briefing on Friday, President Trump enthusiastically and repeatedly promoted the promise of two long-used malaria drugs that are still unproven against the coronavirus, but being tested in clinical trials.

“I’m a smart guy,” he said, while acknowledging he couldn’t predict the drugs would work. “I feel good about it. And we’re going to see. You’re going to see soon enough.”

But the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, delicately — yet forcefully — pushed back from the same stage, explaining that there was only anecdotal evidence that the drugs, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, may be effective against the virus.

The moment of discord between Mr. Trump and one of the nation’s most trusted authorities on the coronavirus was a clash between opinion and fact. It threw Mr. Trump’s faith in his own instincts into conflict with the careful, evidence-based approach of scientists like Dr. Fauci. Mr. Trump appeared eager to sweep aside long-established standards for evaluating drugs in order to champion the remedy he favors.

As word of the drugs’ possible effects has spread around the globe, demand for them has surged, with hospitals ordering the treatments in a desperate effort to treat severely ill patients.

Mr. Trump’s boosterish attitude toward the drugs has deepened worries among doctors and patients with lupus and other diseases who rely on them. The reports that they could work against the coronavirus have fueled shortages.

On Friday, Mr. Trump argued that there was little downside to taking the malaria drugs even if their effectiveness against the coronavirus was not yet proven.

“If you wanted, you can have a prescription. You get a prescription,” he said. “You know the expression, what the hell do you have to lose?”

In a tweet on Saturday, Mr. Trump called attention to yet another unapproved treatment for Covid-19, this time a combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, a common anti-bacterial agent. He cited a report by French researchers in a scientific journal that was not a controlled clinical trial, and studied only 20 patients.

Find a little joy in these tough days.

Feeling anxious about the coronavirus is understandable, but a little respite is also important. Try hosting a remote happy hour, for instance, or learning a new song — one you can sing while washing your hands.

Some businesses try to offset their workers’ financial woes.

With huge chunks of the economy grinding to a halt, many American businesses are bracing for a steep drop-off in demand. For many, that has already meant layoffs. But for some companies that are keeping their employees at home — or keeping their doors open — it means coming up with ways to make their lives easier.

Walmart, the country’s largest retailer, has announced plans to give a cash bonus to all of its hourly workers in the United States. The payments — $300 for full-time workers and $150 for part-timers — were announced on Thursday.

Bar and restaurant workers have been among the hardest hit by governments’ recommendations, or orders, that people stay home. Darden Restaurants, which employs more than 190,000 people across chains like Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse, told employees on Wednesday that it would pay two weeks’ worth of wages to hourly workers whose shifts were reduced or eliminated because of the outbreak.

There is no sign that the abysmal economic news will abate. Wall Street ended its worst week since the 2008 financial crisis, with the Dow below its position on the day before President Trump was inaugurated. The S&P 500, which fell more than 4 percent, is not far from that mark. For much of his term in office, the president has pointed to the markets’ so-called Trump bump as evidence of his success.

Reporting was contributed by Emily Cochrane, Alan Blinder, Elaine Yu, Melissa Eddy, Christopher Flavelle, Peter Robins, Raphael Minder, Maya Salam, Vivian Wang, Isabel Kershner, Livia Albeck-Ripka, Julie Bosman, Jesse McKinley, Matt Apuzzo, Salem Gebrekidan, Katie Thome, Denise Grady, Kenneth P. Vogel, Catie Edmondson, Jesse Drucker, Ben Protess, Steve Eder, Eric Lipton and Alissa J. Rubin.