Coronavirus Live Updates: C.D.C. Offers New Guidelines, Fed Slashes Rates and Italian Deaths Jump
The Fed slashes rates to near-zero.
The Federal Reserve
slashed interest rates to near-zero and unveiled a sweeping set of programs — including plans to snap up huge amounts of government and mortgage-backed debt — in an effort to backstop the United States economy as the spread of coronavirus poses a dire threat to economic growth.
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No gatherings of 50 or more for now, urges the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended Sunday that no mass gatherings with 50 people or more — including weddings, festivals, parades, concerts, sporting events or conferences — be held in the United States for the next eight weeks in one of the federal government’s most sweeping efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
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Cuomo says New York City schools will close this week.
New York City’s public school system, the nation’s largest with 1.1 million students,
will begin shutting down this week, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo said on Sunday, in what is the city’s most aggressive and disruptive effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
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California tells residents 65 and older to stay at home as more states add restrictions.
California called for all people 65 and older to shelter in their homes. Massachusetts moved to ban dining in bars and restaurants beginning Tuesday, effectively closing Boston’s bars for St. Patrick’s Day. And Puerto Rico set some of
the strictest measures in the United States, imposing a 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew and closing nonessential businesses.
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Italy’s deaths jump, Germany closes borders and restrictions multiply around the world.
The coronavirus continued its assault on Italy, the hardest hit country outside of China, with officials on Sunday reporting the number of deaths rose to 1,809 — a 25 percent increase over the day before and the largest one-day uptick yet of any country.
The 368 deaths Italy reported exceeds the highest single-day number China reported at the height of its outbreak. China’s highest daily toll was on Feb. 13, when the country reported 254 new deaths, according to the World Health Organization.
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A top U.S. health official says Americans should be prepared to “hunker down.”
A top health official said on Sunday that stronger efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus would roll out over the next several weeks, a period he characterized as crucial for controlling the outbreak.
Appearing across a number of Sunday morning news programs, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that travel bans enacted last week have helped curb transmission, but that U.S. citizens would have to make personal sacrifices and comply with government guidelines to avoid a “worst-case scenario.”
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At airports, passengers describe long waits and confusion.
As the U.S. government rushed on Saturday to implement Mr. Trump’s restrictions on travel from Europe, part of an effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus, chaos ensued at some of America’s biggest airports.
In Dallas, travelers posted photos on Twitter of long winding lines in the airport. In New York, customs agents in paper and plastic masks boarded a flight from Paris. And in Chicago, where travelers reported standing in line for hours, Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois tagged Mr. Trump in a series of angry tweets about the long waits, saying, “The federal government needs to get its s@#t together. NOW.”
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Mnuchin will ask Congress to reinstate powers used in 2008 financial crisis.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Sunday that he would ask Congress to reinstate powers that were used during the 2008 financial crisis to support the economy as the coronavirus threatens to
grind U.S. business activity to a halt.
The comments suggest that the White House is bracing for a widespread downturn that could harm sectors well beyond the travel and cruise ship industries, and that the federal government could need to return to the type of crisis-era measures that were ultimately scaled back by lawmakers in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act.
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Starbucks will serve “to go” only and a French luxury company will make hand sanitizer instead of perfume.
Starbucks said Sunday it was moving to a “to go” model for at least two weeks in the U.S. and Canada to encourage social distancing.
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LVMH, the French company known for luxury items, said Sunday that it would redirect its cosmetic division to produce mass quantities of hydroalcoholic gel and give it to French health authorities.
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Chinese journalists fight back against government censorship.
As it tightens restrictions on people entering the country, the Chinese government also is leading a sweeping campaign to purge the public sphere of dissent, censoring news reports,
harassing citizen journalists and shutting down news sites.
But Chinese journalists, buoyed by an outpouring of support from the public and widespread calls for free speech, are
fighting back in a rare challenge to the ruling Communist Party.
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A cruise ship is heading to France with a coronavirus quandary.
An Italian ship on a trans-Atlantic voyage has become the cruise industry’s latest case of possible mass exposure.
The Costa Luminosa isolated 1,427 passengers in their rooms on Sunday afternoon en route to Marseille, France from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Over the past few days, one recent passenger with the infection died, two others were found to have it and three more suspected of having it have been removed from the ship.
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