U.S. coronavirus deaths top 1,000 in single day

WASHINGTON — The death toll and economic devastation from the novel coronavirus reached staggering new levels in the United States on Thursday as officials reported more than 1,000 deaths from the pandemic in a single day and revealed that more than 6.6 million Americans had sought unemployment benefits in a single week.

The White House is expected to urge everyone across the country to begin wearing cloth masks or face coverings in public to dampen the spread of the virus. The potential reversal of earlier mask recommendations — which White House officials indicated Thursday were still being debated — signaled the seriousness of the outbreak and rising concerns in Washington about the effect it could have on millions of Americans.

Local officials in one Texas border town already have threatened to fine those who don't cover their nose and mouth if they go out in public. Vice President Mike Pence said guidance on the topic would be issued in coming days.

But coronavirus task force coordinator Deborah Birx on Thursday said officials worry that encouraging mask use might interfere with the White House's prior social distancing guidance, which calls for people to stay home, avoid gatherings of more than 10 people and keep a safe distance from nonfamily members.

"The most important thing is the social distancing and washing your hands, and we don't want people to get an artificial sense of protection because they're behind a mask," Birx said. "When the advisory comes out, it will be an additive piece, if it comes out, rather than saying this is a substitute for" social distancing.

America cemented its position as the new epicenter of the outbreak on Thursday as it tallied a total of more than 240,000 infections and 5,800 virus-related deaths. The number of people infected worldwide passed 1 million, and the number who have died of the disease rose above 52,000.

Officials have warned that hundreds of thousands of Americans could die of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, covid-19, and that does not account for the lives upended in other ways because of the measures local, state and federal officials have taken to stop the virus.

On Thursday, the federal government released figures showing that more than 6.6 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week — a record — and that more than 10.4 million Americans lost their jobs in March. Economists said the unemployment rate likely now stands close to 10% — a massive spike from February, when it stood at a half-century low of 3.5%. Much of America is operating under government-imposed stay-home orders.

President Donald Trump said at the White House's coronavirus briefing Thursday that the government was racing to provide relief on a number of fronts, including the Friday launch of a loan program for small businesses. Pence also announced that the coronavirus task force is considering a plan to reimburse hospitals for coronavirus treatment, in part so those without health insurance would not face hefty bills for seeking help.

Trump said he remains optimistic that the nation will recover once the virus subsides.

"I think it's going to come back very quickly, but first we have to defeat this enemy," he said.

Trump also announced that he had taken a second test for the virus "out of curiosity" to try a version that delivered a faster result; he said he was not infected.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Thursday that she was creating a select committee to oversee the Trump administration's handling of the trillions of dollars that Congress is pouring into the effort to rescue the health system and the U.S. economy.

Pelosi said that this new committee needs to serve as an everyday watchdog of the more than $2 trillion already allocated to fight the virus and the virtual lockdown it has placed on the economy, and that it will have the full investigative authorities of any congressional oversight committee, including subpoena power.

Republicans voiced immediate skepticism about the panel, which Pelosi dubbed the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus. Trump made it clear that he was unhappy about the panel, saying Democrats were conducting "endless partisan investigations."

"It's not any time for witch hunts," Trump said. "It's time to get this enemy defeated."

The hard-hit areas inside of the United States continued to see virus-related casualties rise precipitously Thursday. New York added more than 430 to its death toll, bringing the total there to more than 2,300. Neighboring New Jersey added more than 180, bringing its total to 530. Michigan, which is drawing increasing concern, added 80 deaths Thursday, bringing its total to more than 410.

"Michigan is a hot spot for covid-19 cases," said Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat. "We're on the upswing."

Trump on Thursday sought to suggest that the problems were isolated in some states, after Birx said she was disheartened that cases being reported now involved people infected after the White House issued its social distancing guidelines.

"You can't condemn people living in a flatliner," Trump said, referring to states that have not seen immense increases.

Governors across the country reiterated their desperate calls for medical supplies, asserting that — if current projections hold — they could run out of needed equipment. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, said that if his state continues to use ventilators at the current rate, its stockpiles would be depleted in six days.

Peter Gaynor, the Federal Emergency Management Agency's administrator, told members of Connecticut's congressional delegation in a telephone call Wednesday night that the Strategic National Stockpile had been completely emptied of the vital supplies like masks and gloves needed by doctors and nurses to protect themselves as they treat patients sickened with covid-19.

He said virtually no such personal protective equipment, or PPE, is produced in the United States, but he emphasized that the administration is working to fly in shipments of the equipment from around the world.

"Competition is off the charts," Gaynor said, according to participants on the call.

Gaynor told the delegation that 20% of the new material the government obtains will be taken off the top to help replenish the nation's stockpile. Of the remaining 80%, half of it will be directed by the agency to high-impact areas, while the other half will be let loose in the commercial market. That alarmed some lawmakers, who said the federal government needs to step in to prevent states from competing against one another and other potential buyers, driving up prices.

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In California, though, there seemed to be cautious optimism that the system would not be overloaded. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who issued the first statewide stay-at-home order in the United States, said his state was on track to meet its patient needs.

"It's the individual acts of tens of millions of Californians that allow me to say the following … the [intensive care unit] numbers and the hospitalization numbers, while they're growing, are not growing as significantly as you're seeing in other parts of the country," Newsom, a Democrat, said Thursday, though he made it clear the state is not "out of the woods."

Rear Adm. John Polowczyk, the Navy's supply chief, said the federal government had shipped 27.1 million surgical masks, 22.4 million pairs of protective gloves, 5.2 million face shields and more than 7,600 ventilators, and were scouring the globe for more supplies. But Trump also lashed out at state leaders, saying that some were "complainers" or had "insatiable appetites" and that they should have built more reserves locally.

"Long before this pandemic arrived, they should have been on the open market, just buying," Trump said.

Federal officials announced Thursday that they had seized nearly 1 million pieces of PPE, hand sanitizer and disinfectant spray from price gougers and planed to redistribute them to health-care workers in New York and New Jersey, the two hardest-hit states in the nation.

Though the Dow Jones Industrial average rose 469 points, or 2.2%, and the Standard & Poor’s 500 and Nasdaq composite also posted healthy gains, those figures were not enough to dampen the bleak economic reality for many people: Almost 4 in 10 Americans have been laid off or lost income due to the coronavirus outbreak, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released Thursday.

The IRS plans to send electronic payments as soon as late next week to more than 115 million Americans as part of the stimulus package, a week sooner than expected, according to a plan circulated within the administration. But $30 million in paper checks for millions of other Americans won't start being sent out until April 24, as the government lacks their banking information. Some of those checks won't reach people until September, the document shows.

Democrats announced Thursday that they would delay their presidential nominating convention until the week of Aug. 17 to increase the likelihood that the party can still hold an in-person gathering in Milwaukee.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, meanwhile, said he had only just learned that people can spread the coronavirus without showing symptoms, despite warnings of that possibility from media and federal officials dating to late January.

The Republican governor's remark came as he explained why he was issuing a stay-home order, after previously resisting the step taken by at least 30 states.

"What we've been telling people from directives from the CDC for weeks now is that if you start feeling bad, stay home," Kemp said. "Those individuals could have been infecting people before they ever felt bad. We didn't know that until the last 24 hours."

In an email, Kemp spokesman Cody Hall said the governor was referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Monday guidance noting that studies found infections in patients who never developed symptoms.

While most of the federal government was focused on responding to the virus, the Navy on Thursday took aim at one of its own who raised alarms about it, apparently having become convinced the captain was involved in leaking a letter to the media to force the service to address his concerns.

Officials removed Navy Capt. Brett Crozier, the commanding officer of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, from his job two days after the officer's unusually blunt letter warned that if the service did not remove sailors from the vessel crippled by coronavirus more quickly, it would fail them.

Federal and state officials have warned that the United States is still approaching the "peak" of the crisis, which could come in the next two to four weeks, and until then, they should expect each day to bring more death and suffering than the last. They have urged Americans to practice social distancing through the end of April.

In some of the hardest-hit countries abroad, though, there were some positive signs.

The Italian and Spanish ambassadors to the United States said Thursday that they had seen signs of improvement in their countries, where numbers of confirmed infections, hospitalizations and deaths remain high but are beginning to stabilize.

"These are just the first positive signs, and they have to be taken cautiously," Italian Ambassador Armando Varricchio said. "But they show that measures taken both nationally and at the local level have started to pay off."

Italy, which has the most fatalities of any country in the world, saw its death toll rise to nearly 14,000 Thursday, while Spain’s virus-related deaths passed 10,000.