NEW YORK -- An order requiring most New Yorkers to stay home from work and not gather in groups outside their families went into effect Sunday in an attempt to slow an outbreak that has swept across the globe and threatened to make the state one of the world's biggest coronavirus hot spots.
Officials worldwide, meanwhile, warned of a critical shortage of medical supplies.
The order closing all nonessential businesses in the state and requiring nonessential workers to stay home took effect Sunday night, but officials had been urging people to begin implementing it since Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced it on Friday.
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He and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio also called for getting medical gear such as masks and gowns, as well as doctors and other medical workers, to New York. De Blasio on Sunday asked President Donald Trump to have the U.S. military take over the logistics of making and distributing medical supplies. Cuomo warned that hard-hit states are outbidding one another for ever scarcer supplies, sometimes doubling or tripling prices.
De Blasio also pleaded for help from the federal government on Sunday morning, saying, "It sure as hell feels like we're on our own at this point."
"I can't be blunt enough. If the president doesn't act, people will die who could have lived otherwise," de Blasio said on NBC's Meet the Press.
Predicting the city is about "10 days away" from seeing widespread shortages of critical supplies, he said, "The worst is yet to come."
"April is going to be a lot worse than March, and I fear May could be worse than April," he said in a separate interview on CNN.
The U.S.' top infectious disease expert promised that in New York City and the other hardest-hit places, critical supplies will not run out.
The medical supplies are about to start pouring in and will be "clearly directed to those hot spots that need it most," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on CBS' Face the Nation.
Hours later, Trump said he had ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency to ship mobile hospital centers to Washington, California and New York. For New York, that would mean another 1,000 hospital beds.
"No American is alone as long as we are united," Trump said.
GATHERINGS PERSIST
Worldwide, more than 335,000 people have been infected and nearly 14,600 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University. About 150 countries now have confirmed cases.
There were more than 33,000 cases across the U.S. and more than 400 deaths. New York state accounted for 117 deaths, mostly in New York City, where there were more than 4,400 infections.
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On Sunday, New York passed Washington state, the initial epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, in the number of fatal cases. Only China, Italy and Spain have reported more cases than the U.S.
Cuomo spent Saturday scouting places to build makeshift hospitals and told existing hospitals to figure out ways to increase their current number of beds by at least 50% because of predictions from health officials that covid-19 cases needing advanced medical care will top 100,000 in New York state in the next month or so. Such a deluge could overwhelm hospitals in a state that has about 53,000 beds.
In the face of an invisible danger, New Yorkers were still gathering in large groups in parks, playing basketball or having block parties. Similar scenes played out around the country.
Cuomo expressed exasperation Sunday that people were still ignoring orders to stay away from one another, saying he's still seeing people clustering in groups and acting like it was just another spring weekend.
"It's insensitive. It's arrogant. It's self-destructive. It's disrespectful to other people," Cuomo said. "It has to stop and it has to stop now."
He asked local officials to figure out a plan that could include closing parks; closing playgrounds; or having streets, typically teeming with traffic but now quiet, left open only to pedestrians.
Parts of the U.S. found themselves moving toward the kind of problems seen in New York.
There was a unified message to stay away from large gatherings. Officials called them different things -- social distancing; sheltering in place; or in the case of Nashville, Tenn., a "safer at home" order.
"We're all in quarantine now. Think about it," Cuomo said.
Enforcement of any of these orders is still up in the air. Most locations simply broke up large gatherings and sent people home because one of the last things health officials want is for people to be put in confined spaces such as jails. Many governments are even releasing nonviolent inmates.
Nearly 40 inmates had been diagnosed as of Saturday with covid-19 in the New York prison system, including the Rikers Island complex, and officials warned that a huge jump in cases was likely coming.
There were other reminders Sunday of the reach of the virus. Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky became the first U.S. senator to announce he was infected. Opera star Placido Domingo announced he has covid-19, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel put herself into quarantine after a doctor who gave her a vaccination against pneumonia tested positive for the coronavirus.
COUNTRIES RESPOND
Elsewhere in the world, the coronavirus continued to spread. Italy and Iran reported soaring new death tolls.
Italy banned any movement inside the country in its latest attempt to contain the outbreak.
People will be restricted to the municipality in which they are currently located other than for "non deferrable and proven business or health reasons or other urgent matters," the Health Ministry said in an emailed statement. The measure is applied to all private and public transportation.
The new order followed Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte's decision late Saturday to temporarily halt all nonessential business activity in the country of 60 million people. Supermarkets, pharmacies, banks, post offices and other essential businesses will stay open, he said.
Iran's supreme leader on Sunday refused U.S. assistance to fight the virus, citing an unfounded conspiracy theory that the outbreak could be an American plot. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's comments came amid tensions with the U.S. as Iran faces crushing sanctions over its nuclear actions. Iran reported 1,685 deaths and 21,638 confirmed cases of the virus -- a toll that experts from the World Health Organization say is almost certainly underreported.
For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever or coughing. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia. Some 93,800 people have recovered, mostly in China.
Sunday was Mother's Day in Britain, and the government had a stark message for millions of people: that visiting a mother could kill her. Instead of parties, lunch or tea, Prime Minister Boris Johnson implored Britons to call Mom on a video chat.
Doctors in Britain made urgent pleas for more protective equipment as the number of coronavirus patients in U.K. hospitals soared to more than 5,000. Almost 4,000 medical workers signed a letter to the Sunday Times saying front-line staff members felt like "cannon fodder." They warned that medics would die if they did not receive better equipment.
Elsewhere, authorities in Gaza confirmed the territory's first two cases overnight, in returnees who had arrived from Pakistan.
An outbreak could wreak havoc on the Palestinian territory, which is home to more than 2 million people, many living in cramped cities and refugee camps.
In Syria, where a civil war is grinding on through its 10th year, Health Minister Nizar Yazigi announced the first confirmed coronavirus case Sunday. The 20-year-old woman arrived in Syria from a country that has an outbreak of the virus, but Yazigi did not specify which country.
Afghanistan reported its first death on Sunday, a man in his 40s. The war-ravaged country has reported 34 confirmed cases.
In Spain, intensive care units in some areas were close to their limits even before Sunday's new tally of more than 28,500 infections and 1,750 deaths. A field hospital with 5,500 beds was going up in a convention center in Madrid, and health officials warned that more than 10% of the country's health workers were infected with the coronavirus.
"We can't just repeat the slogans that we will get through this together," said Dr. German Peces-Barba, a lung specialist at Fundacion Jimenez Diaz hospital in Madrid.
But there were some signs of hope. The Chinese city of Wuhan -- the site where the global pandemic was first detected and the first city to be locked down -- went a fourth consecutive day on Sunday without reporting any new or suspected cases.
Parks and other public gathering places were reopening in China as people return to work and businesses resume. However, the country has placed increasing restrictions on those arriving from overseas.
Pope Francis again held his weekly Sunday blessing in his private library. He has streamed the past several services since the virus started sweeping through Italy.
"To the virus pandemic, we want to respond with the universality of prayer, of compassion, of tenderness," the pope said, also asking all Christians across denominations to join in reciting the "Our Father" prayer at noon Wednesday.
Francis also plans to lead a global blessing at an empty St. Peter's Square on Friday. The "Urbi et Orbi," or "to the city and the world," blessing is normally reserved for Christmas Day and Easter.
SUPPLIES FOR AFRICA
A cargo flight containing more than 6 million medical items arrived Sunday in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa. The supplies from billionaire Jack Ma, the founder of China's e-commerce giant Alibaba, will be distributed to African countries in need of supplies to battle the spreading covid-19 pandemic.
The Ethiopian Airlines cargo flight from Guangzhou, China, arrived with 5.4 million face masks, 1.08 million testing kits, 40,000 sets of protective clothing and 60,000 protective face shields, according to Ethiopian officials and the Jack Ma Foundation.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has pledged to distribute the supplies to other countries in Africa. Ma has sent similar shipments of medical supplies to countries in Asia, Europe, North America and Latin America.
The virus has been relatively slow to reach Africa but has now spread to at least 43 of the continent's 54 countries, with more than 1,100 cases confirmed. In response, many African countries are imposing restrictions, including Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda and Tunisia.
In Burkina Faso, the U.S. ambassador, Andrew Young, announced on his personal Twitter account Sunday that he has tested positive for the virus. He is in quarantine, and local sources said he has not gone to a hospital.
Burkina Faso had 75 cases and four deaths as of Sunday, one of the highest numbers of deaths in sub-Saharan Africa.
Young is the first U.S. ambassador to say that he has tested positive for covid-19 and the second ambassador in Burkina Faso to contract the virus, according to diplomats. Italy's ambassador, Andrea Romussi, last week said he tested positive.
Information for this article was contributed by Jim Mustian, Jeffrey Collins, Frank Jordans, Colleen Barry, Joseph Wilson, Yanan Wang, Antonio Calanni, Frances D'Emilio, Jill Lawless, Jon Gambrell, Henry Hou, Elias Meseret, Andrew Meldrum, Denis Farrell, Sam Mednick, Tom Bowker, Fares Akram, Albert Aji, Joseph Krauss, Aya Batrawy, Bassem Mroue, Samya Kullab, Samy Magdy, Mohammed Daraghmeh, Omar Akour, Rahim Faiez of The Associated Press; by Sonia Sirletti, John Follain and Daniele Lepido of Bloomberg News; and by Shant Shahrigian of the New York Daily News.
A Section on 03/23/2020