AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT
Virus exposes US inequality. Will it spur lasting remedies?
WASHINGTON (AP) — The sick who still go to work because they have no paid leave.
Families who face ruin from even a temporary layoff.
Front-line workers risking infection as they drive buses, bag takeout meals and mop hospital floors.
For years, financial inequality has widened in the United States and elsewhere as wealth and income have become increasingly concentrated among the most affluent while millions struggle to get by. Now, the coronavirus outbreak has laid bare the human cost of that inequality, making it more visible and potentially worse.
Congress, the Trump administration and the Federal Reserve have mounted the largest financial intervention in history — a full-scale drive that includes mandating sick leave for some, distributing $1,200 checks to individuals, allocating rescue aid to employers and expanding unemployment benefits to try to help America survive the crisis.
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What you need to know today about the virus outbreak
New York’s coronavirus death toll topped 10,000 Monday even as the absence of fresh hot spots in the U.S. or elsewhere in the world yielded a ray of optimism in global efforts against the disease, though a return to normal was unlikely anytime soon.
Officials around the world worried that halting the quarantine and social distancing behaviors could easily reverse hard-earned progress. Still, there were signs countries were looking in that direction.
Spain permitted some workers to return to their jobs and a hard-hit region of Italy loosened its lockdown restrictions. France extended its strict lockdown until May 11, but President Emmanuel Macron noted “hopeful signs” the spread of the virus may be stabilizing.
Here are some of AP’s top stories Monday 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.
WHAT’S HAPPENING TODAY:
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NY death toll passes 10,000; new hot spots slow to emerge
WASHINGTON (AP) — New York's coronavirus death toll topped 10,000 on Monday even as the lack of fresh hot spots in the U.S. or elsewhere in the world yielded a ray of optimism and fueled discussions about how some places might begin to reopen.
The brunt of the disease has been felt most heavily in New York, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, but grim projections of a virus that would spread with equal ferocity to other corners of America and the world had not yet materialized after more than a month.
The statewide death toll in populous states like Florida and Pennsylvania was on par with individual counties outside New York City. As Colorado deaths surpassed 300 on Monday, Gov. Jared Polis compared that figure to New York's thousands and called it “a tragic indication of our success in Colorado.”
Officials around the world worried that halting quarantine and social-distancing measures could easily undo the hard-earned progress that those steps have achieved in slowing the spread.
Still, there were signs countries were looking in that direction. Spain permitted some workers to return to their jobs, and a hard-hit region of Italy loosened its lockdown restrictions. Governors on both coasts of the U.S. announced that they would join forces to come up with a coordinated reopening at some point, setting the stage for a conflict with President Donald Trump, who asserted that he is the ultimate decision-maker for determining how and when to reopen.
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Biden defeats Sanders as Wisconsin releases election results
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Joe Biden emerged victorious Monday in Wisconsin’s Democratic presidential primary, a turbulent election far more significant for the struggle over whether it should have been held at all last week amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The former vice president’s victory became academic after Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders dropped out, one day after Wisconsin held in-person voting Tuesday despite widespread concern over the health risks. Republican legislative leaders refused to delay the election, and the party won a court battle to keep the date, making Wisconsin an outlier from other states that postponed spring primaries.
Earlier in the Democratic primary season, Wisconsin was seen as a potential battleground state especially given Sanders' commanding victory there in 2016. But in the weeks before the election, Biden emerged as the front-runner as other challengers dropped out. Neither Biden nor Sanders campaigned in the state leading up to the vote due to the pandemic.
Returns weren’t allowed to be reported until Monday due to a quirk in the court battle over the election. Besides the presidential primary, a 10-year term on Wisconsin’s highly politicized Supreme Court — the same body that backed Republicans in holding the election — was on the ballot.
Even before the counting began, a group of Milwaukee-area voters filed a federal lawsuit seeking to force a partial revote to protect the “thousands” of voters who they argue were disenfranchised by the turbulent election. Other lawsuits seemed certain to follow.
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Storms tear through South amid pandemic; more than 30 dead
CHATSWORTH, Ga. (AP) — Storms that killed more than 30 people in the Southeast, piling fresh misery atop a pandemic, spread across the eastern United States on Monday, leaving more than 1 million homes and businesses without power amid floods and mudslides.
In Alabama, people seeking shelter from tornadoes huddled in community shelters, protective masks covering their faces to guard against the new coronavirus. A twister demolished a Mississippi home save for a concrete room where a married couple and their children survived unharmed, but 11 others died in the state.
About 85 miles (137 kilometers) from Atlanta in the mountains of north Georgia, Emma and Charles “Peewee” Pritchett laid still in their bed praying as a suspected twister splintered the rest of their home.
“I said, ‘If we’re gonna die I’m going to be beside him,’” the woman said Monday. Both survived without injuries.
Nine died in South Carolina, Gov. Gov. Henry McMaster said, and coroners said eight were killed in Georgia. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said two people were killed in Chattanooga, and others died under falling trees or inside collapsed buildings in Arkansas and North Carolina.
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British PM's praise for health service could boost its cause
LONDON (AP) — His skin pale and his eyes hooded from a week in the hospital with the coronavirus, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson looked into the camera and paid tribute to the two nurses who never left his bedside for 48 hours, a time when his fight to survive "could have gone either way.″
Jenny McGee from New Zealand and Luis Pitarma from Portugal, he said, embodied the caring and sacrifice of National Health Service staff on the front lines of the pandemic, which has already killed 11,329 people in Britain.
“The reason, in the end, my body did start to get enough oxygen was because, for every second of the night, they were watching and they were thinking and they were caring and making the interventions I needed,” he said in an address to the nation Sunday. “So that is also how I know, that across this country, 24 hours a day, for every second, for every hour, there are hundreds of thousands of NHS staff who are acting with the same care and thought and precision as Jenny and Luis.’’
Johnson's statement could mean the NHS has a powerful new advocate as it seeks to reverse a decade of austerity that has left Britain's doctors and nurses struggling to treat the flood of coronavirus patients with inadequate supplies of protective gear. At least 19 NHS workers have died in the outbreak.
It also was notable for Johnson’s unabashed praise of two immigrants. He has staked his career on Brexit, a cause closely bound up with the desire of many in Britain to control immigration, and his words could mean a change in his government's tone.
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Could old vaccines for other germs protect against COVID-19?
WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists are dusting off some decades-old vaccines against other germs to see if they could provide a little stopgap protection against COVID-19 until a more precise shot arrives.
It may sound odd: Vaccines are designed to target a specific disease. But vaccines made using live strains of bacteria or viruses seem to boost the immune system's first line of defense, a more general way to guard against germs. And history books show that sometimes translates into at least some cross-protection against other, completely different bugs.
There’s no evidence yet that the approach would rev up the immune system enough to matter against the new coronavirus. But given that a brand-new vaccine is expected to take 12 to 18 months, some researchers say it's time to put this approach to a faster test, starting with a tuberculosis vaccine.
“This is still a hypothesis,” said Dr. Mihai Netea of Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands. But if it works, “it could be a very important tool to bridge this dangerous period until we have on the market a proper, specific vaccine.”
The World Health Organization issued a stern warning Monday not to use the TB vaccine against COVD-19, unless and until studies prove it works.
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Sanders backs Biden as ex-rivals join forces to beat Trump
WASHINGTON (AP) — Bernie Sanders endorsed Joe Biden's presidential campaign on Monday, encouraging his progressive supporters to rally behind the presumptive Democratic nominee in an urgent bid to defeat President Donald Trump.
“I am asking all Americans, I’m asking every Democrat, I’m asking every independent, I’m asking a lot of Republicans, to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy, which I endorse,” the Vermont senator said in a virtual event with Biden.
The backing came less than a week after Sanders ended his presidential campaign, which was centered around progressive policies such as universal health care. There were early signs that some leading progressives weren't ready to fully follow Sanders' lead. And Trump's campaign was eager to use the endorsement to tie Biden more closely to Sanders, whose identity as a democratic socialist is objectionable to Republicans and some Democrats.
Still, Sanders' embrace of Biden was crucial for someone who is tasked with bridging the Democratic Party's entrenched ideological divides. Democratic disunity helped contribute to Hillary Clinton's loss to Trump in 2016.
Perhaps eager to avoid a repeat of that bruising election year, Sanders offered his endorsement much earlier in the 2020 campaign. Sanders backed Clinton four years ago, but only after the end of a drawn-out nomination fight and a bitter dispute over the Democratic platform that extended to the summer convention.
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Lawmaker: Trump officials want delay in census due to virus
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The Trump administration wants to delay deadlines for the 2020 census because of the coronavirus outbreak, a move that if approved would push back timetables for releasing data used to draw congressional and legislative districts, the chair of the House oversight committee said Monday.
U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney said administration officials were requesting all field operations be postponed until June 1 and that the deadline for wrapping up the nation's head count be pushed back until Oct. 31.
Field operations for the 2020 census have been suspended since mid-March and were set to resume this week. The deadline for finishing the head count also had been pushed back from the end of July to mid-August because of the pandemic.
Maloney, a Democrat from New York, said in a statement that the administration also is seeking to delay the deadline for delivering state population counts used for apportionment — the process of carving up congressional districts — from the end of this year to the end of next April.
The administration also is seeking to push back the deadline for giving states data for redistricting from next March to next July, the statement added.
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VIRUS DIARY: Connecting to the world from a balcony in Rome
ROME (AP) — Balconies are a kind of extension of a window on the world. During Month One of lockdown in Italy, stepping out onto mine kept me connected to a drastically shrunken daily universe.
Like millions of others these weeks in Italy, I am working from home, part of nationwide efforts to contain coronavirus' spread. To take a break, I go out on my balcony, in the afternoon, when the sun won’t blind me. I peer below to catch precious glimpses of everyday life, which is barely the everyday life we always knew.
People-watching means catching sight of citizens outside for severely limited circumstances — heading to shop for food, taking a brief stroll, walking the dog.
Early in the lockdown, residents emerged at the stroke of 6 p.m. on their balconies, terraces or rooftops to sing and clap in a nationwide, simultaneous affirmation that they were alive and healthy. Soon, the novelty wore off. I was glad. That hour is when Italian authorities read out the numbers of the thousands of new cases, of the critically ill fighting for their lives against a virus that steals away breath, of the dead who lost the fight. One evening, someone shot off a firecracker just when the death toll was announced. I slammed shut the balcony’s doors.
One day, I spotted the driver of a utility truck deliver a pair of metal canisters to the apartment building directly across the street. Why would someone be ordering fire extinguishers at this time? Don’t they have enough to worry about?