NEW YORK -- The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus climbed past 3,800 Tuesday, eclipsing China's official count, as hard-hit New York City rushed to bring in more medical professionals and ambulances and parked refrigerated morgue trucks on the streets to collect the dead.
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Public-health experts at a briefing with President Donald Trump projected that the number of U.S. deaths could range from 100,000 to 240,000 even if Americans continue to stay home and limit contact with others. They said they hope the figure won't soar that high if everyone does their part to prevent the virus from spreading.
"I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead," said Trump, who has extended social-distancing guidelines to April 30. "We're going to go through a very tough two weeks."
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., was among the first in Congress to raise an alarm about the virus.
McConnell told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday that Trump's impeachment trial distracted the federal government from the novel coronavirus as it reached the United States in January, despite warnings at the time from public-health experts and members of Congress about the spread of the deadly virus.
The outbreak "came up while we were tied down on the impeachment trial. And I think it diverted the attention of the government, because everything every day was all about impeachment," McConnell said.
Cotton, an outspoken critic of China's communist government, has said he does not trust China to act truthfully about the virus.
"He was first, and I think Tom was right on the mark," McConnell said. "Tom figured this out early, and he was absolutely right."
Cotton, in a separate interview Tuesday with Hewitt, said he had been studying the virus since mid-January. "Unfortunately, Washington, especially the Congress, was consumed with another matter ... the partisan impeachment of the president," he said.
"I was focused at the time on what I thought was going to be a growing crisis coming out of Wuhan. And unfortunately, it's been proven correct," Cotton said. The virus originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
The Trump administration has been severely criticized for its slow response to the pandemic, especially for the shortage of coronavirus testing kits when the infection first spread to the U.S. from China.
ITALY HOPEFUL
Elsewhere around the world, hard-hit Italy reported that the infection rate appears to be leveling off and new cases could start declining, but that the crisis is far from over. Spain struggled to fend off the collapse of its hospital system. Vladimir Putin's Russia moved to crack down on quarantine violations and "fake news" about the outbreak. And China edged closer to normal as stores in the epicenter city of Wuhan began reopening.
Worldwide, more than 850,000 people have been infected and over 42,000 have died, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University. Italy and Spain accounted for half the deaths, while the U.S. had over 186,000 infections, with more dead than China's official toll of nearly 3,200.
New York was the nation's deadliest hot spot, with about 1,550 deaths statewide, most of them in New York City, which was expecting things to get much worse in the coming weeks. There are almost 76,000 cases confirmed in New York.
At Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, critically ill covid-19 patients are filling intensive-care units, surgical floors and operating rooms and waiting in the emergency room for beds to become available, said Dr. Eric Wei of the city's hospital agency.
"I've practiced emergency medicine for a long time, and I'm seeing things that I never could have imagined in terms of the things this virus can do to all ages, including people who were previously healthy," he said.
A 1,000-bed emergency hospital set up at the mammoth Javits Convention Center began taking non-coronavirus patients to help relieve the city's overwhelmed health system. A Navy hospital ship with 1,000 beds was expected to begin accepting patients Tuesday.
The indoor tennis center that is the site of the U.S. Open tournament is being turned into a hospital as well.
The city also worked to bring in 250 out-of-town ambulances and 500 paramedics to deal with a crush of emergency calls. The fire commissioner said ambulances are responding to double their normal daily total of 3,000 calls to 911. A five-day stretch last week was the busiest in the history of the city's emergency services operation.
In addition, New York authorities sought to bring on more volunteer health care professionals and hoped to have them on board by Thursday. Nearly 80,000 former nurses, doctors and others are said to be stepping forward, and the governor said officials are doing background checks and otherwise making sure they are fit for duty.
GRIM SCENES IN NYC
Around the city, workers in protective gear have been seen putting bodies into refrigerated trailers. At some hospitals, like Lenox Hill in Manhattan, the trucks are parked on streets, along sidewalks and in front of apartments. Cars and buses passed by as corpses were loaded by forklift at Brooklyn Hospital Center. People captured some of the scenes by cellphone.
"Nobody can even believe it," Trump said about watching video footage from Elmhurst hospital in New York. "I watched the doctors and the nurses walking into that hospital this morning. It's like military people going into battle, going into war."
The crisis hit close to home for Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who reported teary-eyed that his brother, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, was infected.
The 49-year-old TV newsman tweeted that he has suffered from fever, chills and shortness of breath and will be doing his shows from his basement, where he has quarantined.
Figures on deaths and infections around the world are supplied by government health authorities and compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
But the numbers are regarded with skepticism by public-health experts because of different counting practices, a lack of testing in places, the numerous mild cases that have been missed, and perhaps governments' efforts to downplay the severity of the crisis.
For example, in Italy, where the death toll was put at more than 12,400, the country's emergency coordinator, Domenico Arcuri, acknowledged that officials don't have a handle on how many people are dying at home or in nursing homes.
Still, there was a glimmer of hope there. Dr. Silvio Brusaferro, head of Italy's institutes of health, said that three weeks into a nationwide lockdown, the hardest-hit country in Europe is seeing the rate of new infections level off.
"The curve suggests we are at the plateau," he said. But "arriving at the plateau doesn't mean we have conquered the peak and we're done. It means now we should start to see the decline if we continue to place maximum attention on what we do every day."
In Russia, lawmakers approved harsher punishments, including prison sentences of several years, for violating quarantine rules and spreading misinformation. The chief doctor at Moscow's top hospital for coronavirus patients said he tested positive, a week after shaking hands with Putin.
Spain reported more than 840 new deaths, pushing the toll above 8,400 and forcing Madrid to open a second temporary morgue after an ice rink pressed into service last week became overwhelmed.
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In the hot spot of Louisiana, the death toll climbed to 239. Tony Spell, a pastor charged with a misdemeanor for holding six church services in violation of the governor's ban on public gatherings said he would continue to defy the law "because the Lord told us to."
Louisiana's governor said the hard-hit New Orleans region is on track to run out of breathing machines by the weekend and hospital beds a week later. The Trump administration has committed to sending 150 ventilators from the national stockpile, but the state hasn't received an arrival date. Michigan said it needs 5,000 to 10,000 more.
Among the few positive signs: In Britain, where the number of dead reached nearly 1,800, the medical director of the National Health Service's operations in England said there is evidence that social distancing is working. And China reported just one new death from the coronavirus and 48 new cases, all of them from overseas.
INFRASTRUCTURE TOUTED
Meanwhile, Trump said Tuesday that a $2 trillion infrastructure package should be part of Congress' next response to the pandemic.
Citing extraordinarily low interest rates that have reduced the cost of federal borrowing, Trump said on Twitter that now "is the time" to push forward with an infrastructure package in response to the severe economic downturn. Numerous House Democrats also have discussed in recent weeks advancing infrastructure legislation as part of their response to the pandemic.
"With interest rates for the United States being at ZERO, this is the time to do our decades long awaited Infrastructure Bill," Trump wrote on Twitter. "It should be VERY BIG & BOLD, Two Trillion Dollars, and be focused solely on jobs and rebuilding the once great infrastructure of our Country! Phase 4."
His "Phase 4" comment refers to the fact that Congress has passed three bills in response to problems created by the outbreak of the coronavirus, with the most recent law enacted on Friday. That law directs more than $2 trillion in spending for emergency assistance to companies, $1,200 payments to millions of Americans, assistance for airlines, state unemployment programs and a host of other groups.
The president offered no additional specifics about his infrastructure idea, and a White House spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for more details.
Infrastructure talks have largely centered on providing hundreds of billions for maintenance and repair work on the nation's roads, bridges and other decaying infrastructure -- all of which would probably require workers to be in close contact with one another.
"I've been making this point for years now: He's correct," said Jared Bernstein, former economic adviser to then-Vice President Joe Biden, a Democrat, about Trump's argument about the potential to use low interest rates to fund a large infrastructure bill. "But we have to be realistic about how infrastructure fits into the nature of the current crisis."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for her part, is suggesting the next round of fiscal stimulus should include a retroactive rollback of a tax change that hurt high earners in states like New York and California.
A full rollback of the limit on the state and local tax deduction, or SALT, would provide a quick cash infusion in the form of increased tax rebates to an estimated 13 million American households -- nearly all of which earn at least $100,000 a year.
In an interview with The New York Times, Pelosi said the next phase of an economic rescue package should include additional measures to get more money directly to individuals.
That could be achieved, she said, by having Congress "retroactively undo SALT," a reference to a cap on the deduction that Republicans included in their 2017 tax overhaul. That limit prevents households from deducting more than $10,000 a year in state and local tax expenses from their federal tax bills.
"We could reverse that for 2018 and 2019 so that people could refile their taxes" and receive more money back from the government, Pelosi said in the interview. "They'd have more disposable income, which is the lifeblood of our economy, a consumer economy that we are."
"The ink is hardly dry on a $2 trillion-plus emergency package," said Sen. Patrick Toomey, R-Pa. "It's far too soon to know whether and of what nature additional legislation is needed. If we determine that another measure is necessary, it should not be the vehicle for Speaker Pelosi's partisan, parochial wish list."
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Information for this article was contributed by Colleen Long, Karen Matthews, David Rising, Matthew Daly, Mary Clare Jalonick and Kevin Freking of The Associated Press; by Jeff Stein and Seung Min Kim of The Washington Post; and by Jim Tankersley and Emily Cochrane of The New York Times.
A Section on 04/01/2020