AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT
20,000: US death toll overtakes Italy's as Midwest braces
CHICAGO (AP) — The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus eclipsed Italy's for the highest in the world Saturday, surpassing 20,000, as Chicago and other cities across the Midwest braced for a potential surge in victims and moved to snuff out smoldering hot spots of contagion before they erupt.
With the New York area still deep in crisis, fear mounted over the spread of the scourge into the nation’s heartland.
Twenty-four residents of an Indiana nursing home hit by COVID-19 have died, while a nursing home in Iowa saw 14 deaths. Chicago's Cook County has set up a temporary morgue that can take more than 2,000 bodies. And Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has been going around telling groups of people to “break it up.”
In Europe, meanwhile, countries used roadblocks, drones, helicopters, mounted patrols and the threat of fines to keep people from traveling over Easter weekend. And with infections and deaths slowing in Italy, Spain and other places on the Continent, governments took tentative steps toward loosening the weeks-long shutdowns.
Glorious weather across Europe posed an extra test of people's discipline.
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What you need to know today about the virus outbreak
The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus eclipsed Italy’s to become the highest in the world at more than 19,700, as Chicago and other cities across the Midwest braced for a potential surge in victims. Meanwhile, the coronavirus crisis is taxing New York City’s 911 system like never before.
President Donald Trump and his officials have made critical promises meant to reassure a country in the throes of the pandemic. But Americans are still going without medical supplies and financial help from the government at the very time they need it most — and were told they would have it.
Europe is trying to persuade its residents to stay home ahead of the Easter holiday and the anticipated sunny weather while grappling with how and when to start loosening the weekslong shutdowns of much of public life.
Doctors around the world are frantically trying to figure out how COVID-19 is killing their patients so they can attempt new ways to fight back.
Here are some of AP’s top stories Saturday on the world’s coronavirus pandemic. Follow APNews.com/VirusOutbreak for updates through the day and APNews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak for stories explaining some of its complexities.
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Trump leaves trail of unmet promises in coronavirus response
WASHINGTON (AP) — For several months, President Donald Trump and his officials have cast a fog of promises meant to reassure a country in the throes of the coronavirus pandemic. Trump and his team haven't delivered on critical ones.
They talk numbers. Bewildering numbers about masks on the way. About tests being taken. About ships sailing to the rescue, breathing machines being built and shipped, field hospitals popping up, aircraft laden with supplies from abroad, dollars flowing to crippled businesses.
Piercing that fog is the bottom-line reality that Americans are going without the medical supplies and much of the financial help they most need from the government at the very time they need it most — and were told they would have it.
The U.S. now is at or near the height of COVID-19 sickness and death, experts believe.
There's no question that on major fronts — masks, gowns, diagnostic tests, ventilators and more —- the federal government is pushing hard now to get up to speed. Impressive numbers are being floated for equipment and testing procedures in the pipeline.
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Doctor gambles on clot-busting drug to save virus patients
WASHINGTON (AP) — The woman was dying. New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital was about to call her husband and break the news that there was nothing left to try. Then Dr. Hooman Poor took a gamble.
With high-stress, high-stakes decisions, doctors around the world are frantically trying to figure out how COVID-19 is killing their patients so they can attempt new ways to fight back. One growing theory: In the sickest of the sick, little blood clots clog the lungs.
Poor couldn’t prove it. The tests required would further endanger his staff, who were already at risk of getting the virus. But the lung specialist saw clues that were “screaming blood clots.” So Poor pulled out a drug best known for treating strokes, and held his breath.
“I said, ‘What do we actually have to lose?’” Poor told The Associated Press. “That’s when I decided to give not just a blood thinner but a blood clot buster.”
Exactly what’s going on with blood clots in at least some COVID-19 patients is a mystery.
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Coronavirus ravages storied New Orleans Mardi Gras group
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — On Fat Tuesday, 51-year-old Cornell Charles was taking part in a storied New Orleans Mardi Gras tradition central to the city's African American community — driving a car in the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club’s parade.
A month later his wife of three decades was watching him take his last breath, a victim of the coronavirus epidemic raging through the city.
“I talked to him. I told him how much I was going to miss him,” said his wife, Nicole, describing those last minutes on March 24. "He literally took his last breath in front of my face and that was it.”
In a city ravaged by the coronavirus outbreak, members of the Zulu krewe, one of the groups that sponsor Mardi Gras parades and balls, have paid a heavy price. Four of the fraternal organization's members have died from coronavirus-related complications, said Zulu President Elroy A. James. Two others have also died since the pandemic began, though it's not known if their deaths were caused by the virus, he said.
An additional 20 have tested positive. Some are self-quarantining at home, some were hospitalized and released, while others are still hospitalized, James said.
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The week that was: Stories from the coronavirus saga
As coronavirus cases topped 1.75 million in the world during the past week — Holy Week for Christians and Passover for Jews — deaths in the United States overtook Italy's. And fatalities kept adding up sharply in a sequestered, terrified New York City. Associated Press journalists fanned out across the city to compile a portrait, The Fight For New York, and tell the story of 24 hours in a metropolis under duress — including one account of a seventh-generation physician trying to navigate his way through.
Wuhan, the Chinese city where the outbreak started late last year, finally emerged from its slumber after 76 days of lockdown. Residents were elated to be back outside, though life is far from normal. How the city manages the transition will be closely watched by policymakers around the world as they mull their own loosening of controls. Japan declared a state of emergency months after its first cases were identified, but stopped short of issuing a lockdown order.
Meanwhile, the pandemic is posing non-medical challenges beyond the personal and the economic. It also is making it harder for first responders, straining 911 services in New York City like never before.
Associated Press journalists across the planet chronicled it all — including continuing portraits of some of the lives lost and an exploration of a pandemic in sound. This guide to some of their words and images is a diary of a world at once on pause and in the middle of the biggest fight of its generation.
HEALTH AND SCIENCE
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Are schools open? Governor, NYC mayor give different answers
NEW YORK (AP) — Governor and mayor locked horns again Saturday, this time over whether school buildings in the nation's largest district would close for the rest of the year, with classes continuing online.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a news briefing that public school sites in the city's 1.1 million-student school district would shutter for the rest of the academic year to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Soon afterward, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said at his own briefing that the decision was his to make.
“It is my legal authority in this situation, yes,” Cuomo said.
De Blasio, like Cuomo a Democrat, had said that it was not an easy decision to close school buildings in favor of online learning, but that "it is the right decision and it’s also a decision made a little clearer by the fact that the distance learning is working more and more every day.”
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Crime drops around the world as COVID-19 keeps people inside
CHICAGO (AP) — The coronavirus pandemic that has crippled big-box retailers and mom and pop shops worldwide may be making a dent in illicit business, too.
In Chicago, one of America’s most violent cities, drug arrests have plummeted 42% in the weeks since the city shut down, compared with the same period last year. Part of that decrease, some criminal lawyers say, is that drug dealers have no choice but to wait out the economic slump.
“The feedback I’m getting is that they aren’t able to move, to sell anything anywhere,” said Joseph Lopez, a criminal lawyer in Chicago who represents reputed drug dealers.
Overall, Chicago’s crime declined 10% after the pandemic struck, a trend playing out globally as cities report stunning crime drops in the weeks since measures were put into place to slow the spread of the virus. Even among regions that have the highest levels of violence outside a war zone, fewer people are being killed and fewer robberies are taking place.
Still, law enforcement officials worry about a surge of unreported domestic violence, and what happens when restrictions lift — or go on too long.
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Melania Trump is having a moment during coronavirus pandemic
WASHINGTON (AP) — Melania Trump is having a moment in the midst of a pandemic.
After catching some criticism for not mentioning the coronavirus in a March speech to a parent-teacher group, the first lady has increased her engagement on the issue, mostly through social media since she is staying home like most Americans.
This week, she posted a photo of herself wearing a white face mask — something her husband, President Donald Trump, has said he will not do. It was her way of reinforcing the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation that everyone cover their nose and mouth in public.
“It is another recommended guideline to keep us safe,” she said in a video released Thursday.
Like everyone else, the first lady is retooling her spring plans because of the virus threat.
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'We're all in with our patients': An ER doctor's virus fight
NEW YORK (AP) — The call comes over the emergency-room loudspeakers: Sick patient. Everyone needed.
The patient is struggling to breathe, his blood-oxygen level a life-threatening 50%. Another presumed coronavirus case. Another human being whom Dr. Joseph Habboushe and his colleagues will try to save and get to a hospital bed for more care.
A seventh-generation physician who co-founded an online medical reference called MDCalc, the 44-year-old Habboushe has dug into the challenge of treating a new disease.
“It feels very appropriate that I get to be on the front lines and try to fight this war,” he says. “We’re all in this together, and we’re all in with our patients.”
But he's not immune to the dread. The fear that he or his colleagues may fall ill. The fact that "we don’t know our enemy, really.”