AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT
Virus deaths, unemployment accelerating across Europe, US
NEW YORK (AP) — Coronavirus deaths mounted with alarming speed in Spain, Italy and New York, the most lethal hot spot in the United States, while the outbreak has thrown 10 million Americans out of work in just two weeks and by Friday had sickened more than a million people.
The public health crisis deepened in New York City, where one funeral home in a hard-hit neighborhood had 185 bodies stacked up — more than triple normal capacity. The city has seen at least 1,500 virus deaths.
“It’s surreal,” owner Pat Marmo said, adding that he’s been begging families to insist hospitals hold their dead loved ones as long as possible. “We need help.”
Worldwide the number of reported infections hit another gloomy milestone — 1 million, with more than 53,000 deaths, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University. But the true numbers are believed to be much higher because of testing shortages, many mild cases that have gone unreported and suspicions that some countries are covering up the extent of their outbreaks.
Spain on Thursday reported a record one-day number of deaths, 950, bringing its overall toll to about 10,000, despite signs that the infection rate is slowing. Italy recorded 760 more deaths, for a total of 13,900, the worst of any country, but new infections continued to level off.
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'Surreal': NY funeral homes struggle as virus deaths surge
NEW YORK (AP) — Pat Marmo walked among 20 or so deceased in the basement of his Brooklyn funeral home, his protective mask pulled down so his pleas could be heard.
“Every person there, they’re not a body,” he said. “They’re a father, they’re a mother, they’re a grandmother. They’re not bodies. They’re people.”
Like many funeral homes in New York and around the globe, Marmo’s business is in crisis as he tries to meet surging demand amid the coronavirus pandemic that has killed around 1,400 people in New York City alone, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University. His two cellphones and the office line are ringing constantly. He’s apologizing to families at the start of every conversation for being unusually terse, and begging them to insist hospitals hold their dead loved ones as long as possible.
His company is equipped to handle 40 to 60 cases at a time, no problem. On Thursday morning, it was taking care of 185.
“This is a state of emergency,” he said. “We need help.”
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Coronavirus survivor: 'In my blood, there may be answers'
NEW YORK (AP) — Tiffany Pinckney remembers the fear when COVID-19 stole her breath. So when she recovered, the New York City mother became one of the country’s first survivors to donate her blood to help treat other seriously ill patients.
“It is definitely overwhelming to know that in my blood, there may be answers,” Pinckney told The Associated Press.
Doctors around the world are dusting off a century-old treatment for infections: Infusions of blood plasma teeming with immune molecules that helped survivors beat the new coronavirus. There’s no proof it will work. But former patients in Houston and New York were early donors, and now hospitals and blood centers are getting ready for potentially hundreds of survivors to follow.
“There’s a tremendous call to action,” said Dr. David Reich, president of New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, which declared Pinckney recovered and raced to collect her blood. “People feel very helpless in the face of this disease. And this is one thing that people can do to help their fellow human beings.”
As treatments get underway, “we just hope it works," he said.
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Jobs report Friday is expected to end record hiring streak
WASHINGTON (AP) — After a record 113 straight months of hiring, the government's monthly jobs report Friday is expected to show that the American jobs machine came to a sudden halt in March as a result of the coronavirus.
Economists have forecast that the government will say employers shed about 150,000 jobs and that the unemployment rate rose from a half-century low of 3.5% to 3.9%, according to FactSet. But the jobs figure will vastly understate the magnitude of last month's losses because the government surveyed employers before the heaviest layoffs struck in the past two weeks. Nearly 10 million Americans have since applied for unemployment benefits, far more than for any corresponding period on record.
Still, some job cuts likely happened earlier in the month, when most economists think businesses began clamping down on hiring. The job loss for March will underscore the head-snapping speed with which the economy has unraveled after nearly a decade in which employers added nearly 23 million jobs. As recently as February, employers added 273,000 jobs.
Economists had welcomed February's job gain, though they wondered why hourly paychecks weren't rising more quickly. But any concerns over sluggish wage growth have now been put well off to the side.
“Four years of job gains have evaporated in the span of two weeks,” said Daniel Zhao, an economist at the jobs website Glassdoor.
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The daily terrors: Improvising in a makeshift ICU in Spain
BADALONA, Spain (AP) — The tension is palpable. There is no non-essential talking. An orchestra of medical monitors marks the tempo with an endless series of soft, distinct beeps.
Never have so many people been inside the library of the Germans Trias i Pujol hospital in northeastern Spain. But the health care workers in improvised protective gear aren’t consulting medical books. Instead, they’re treating patients in critical condition suffering from pneumonia caused by the coronavirus.
From the outside, this makeshift intensive-care unit in Badalona, near Barcelona, looks nothing like a library. The bookshelves have been removed to make room for up to 20 hospital beds, breathing machines and an array of medical equipment after the longstanding ICU and other areas of the hospital flooded with COVID-19 patients.
With the scarcity of full-body protective suits across Spain, doctors and nurses are employing what they can find, reusing masks, layering oversized surgical gowns with plastic aprons and running through an infinite number of latex gloves.
Like scuba divers, they apply a small dose of detergent to their goggles just before stepping into the sweltering, virus-laden room in the hopes of mitigating the inevitable fogging of their eye protection caused by their own breathing.
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10 Things to Know for Today
Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today:
1. VIRUS DEATHS, UNEMPLOYMENT ACCELERATING Coronavirus deaths mount in Spain, Italy and New York, while the outbreak throws 10 million Americans out of work in just two weeks and sickens more than a million people.
2. ‘WE NEED HELP’ Funeral directors in New York City are facing unprecedented demand due to the coronavirus pandemic with AP witnessing 185 bodies stacked up in one funeral home — triple the normal capacity.
3. UK HEALTH SERVICE GEARS UP FOR VIRUS PEAK Britain’s National Health Service is facing the biggest test in its 72-year history as the government races to ensure medical facilities have the staffing and equipment they need.
4. WANTED: COVID-19 SURVIVOR’S BLOOD Without proof that it works, doctors want to use blood plasma from recovered coronavirus patients to treat the sick, giving them a dose of the immune system antibodies that fight the virus.
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"We love you NHS": UK health service gears up for virus peak
LONDON (AP) — Dr. Nishant Joshi is on the front line of the coronavirus pandemic — and he's angry.
The emergency medicine specialist says he risks his life every time he walks into a British hospital because doctors and nurses haven't been equipped with the personal protection equipment they need to prevent them from being infected with COVID-19.
But he’s not just a doctor: he’s a 31-year-old husband expecting his first child.
“Some of my colleagues have been taking out life insurance in the last few weeks,’’ Joshi told The Associated Press. “The government has to take square responsibility for this, because you should never be putting your health care workers in a situation where we are scared for our lives."
Britain's National Health Service, the cornerstone of the nation's post-war welfare state, will be stretched to the breaking point in the coming weeks as hospitals treat an expected tsunami of critically ill patients when the pandemic reaches its peak across the United Kingdom.
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In time of crisis, Trump-Pelosi relationship remains broken
WASHINGTON (AP) — Two of the most powerful people in Washington have not spoken in five months at a time when the nation is battling its worst health crisis in a century, one that has already killed more than 6,000 Americans and put 10 million others out of work.
President Donald Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last talked on Oct. 16, when Pelosi pointed her finger at the seated president during a heated exchange in a White House meeting that was captured in a widely shared photograph. Pelosi stormed out, and the two leaders’ frayed relationship was soon severed by the House's impeachment of Trump months later.
Now, there are worries the broken relationship could hinder the federal government's ability to respond to the growing coronavirus crisis, the extent of the damage reflected in Thursday's report that a record 6.6 million people filed for unemployment, adding to more than 3 million from two weeks earlier.
“Relationships are the beginning of everything. Trust in one another is key to cooperation,” said John M. Bridgeland, who held government posts under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
The relationship between Trump and Pelosi, never warm, appears beyond repair after the Republican president's impeachment, according to allies of both leaders. Even the COVID-19 pandemic, which has rewritten the rules of daily American life and threatens people's health and employment, has done nothing to thaw the ice between the two.
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After ignoring warnings, Israeli ultra-Orthodox hit by virus
BNEI BRAK, Israel (AP) — Early this week, the streets of the central Israeli city of Bnei Brak were bustling with shoppers as ultra-Orthodox residents, obeying their religious leaders, ignored pleas to stay home in the face of the coronavirus threat.
By Friday, Bnei Brak had become the country' worst hot spot and now resembles a ghost town. One expert estimated that nearly 40% of the city's population might already have been infected.
The city has become a lightning rod for anger and frustration by some secular Israelis who allege insular Haredi communities — with disproportionately high numbers of confirmed cases — are undermining national efforts to contain the virus.
The pandemic also has threatened to upend deep-seated customs in the religious world, including blind obedience to religious leaders and the belief that religious studies and traditions take precedence over the rules of a modern state.
The crisis is rooted in a combination of factors. Israel’s ultra-Orthodox tend to live in poor, crowded neighborhoods where sickness can quickly spread. Synagogues, the centerpiece of social life, bring men together to pray and socialize in small spaces.
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Local newspapers are facing their own coronavirus crisis
NEW YORK (AP) — Just when Americans need it most, a U.S. newspaper industry already under stress is facing an unprecedented new challenge.
Readers desperate for information are more reliant than ever on local media as the coronavirus spreads across the U.S. They want to know about cases in their area, where testing centers are, what the economic impact is. Papers say online traffic and subscriptions have risen -- the latter even when they’ve lowered paywalls for pandemic-related stories.
But newspapers and other publications are under pressure as advertising craters. They are cutting jobs, staff hours and pay, dropping print editions -- and in some cases shutting down entirely.
Circulation and web traffic are up at the Sun Chronicle, a daily in Attleboro, Massachusetts, as it scrambles to cover the coronavirus pandemic. It’s “all we do,” said Craig Borges, executive editor and general manager. But with many local restaurants, gyms, colleges and other businesses closed, the paper has laid off a handful of sales and mailroom employees and a political reporter. It has about a dozen newsroom employees left.
“Hopefully we can work this out and make it through,” Borges said.