Edited by: Fern Sidman
As the rapid developments in the Coronavirus pandemic continue to dominate headlines around the world, VOA News reported that the White House is recommending that people in the United States avoid social gatherings of more than 10 people for at least the next 15 days.
Commenting on the new guidance from his administration’s coronavirus task force, President Trump said on Monday that Americans should attend online school session, avoid discretionary travel, and definitely not even consider patronizing bars and restaurants, as was reported by VOA.
“As we combat the virus, each and every one of us has a critical role to play in stopping the spread and transmission of the virus,” said the president, leading a nearly one-hour long briefing for reporters.
He denied a nationwide curfew is under consideration.
VOA reported that when asked how long the virus crisis would last, Trump predicted it would be until July or August or possibly longer.
“It could be right in that period of time where … it washes through,” Trump said
Some of the latest attempts to prevent the virus from spreading including new shelter-in-place orders Tuesday for about 7 million people in the San Francisco area, as well as closures of movie theaters, gyms and restaurants in Washington, D.C., as was reported by VOA News.
In New York and New Jersey, all public and private schools have been ordered closed as well as restaurants, bars, gyms, businesses, libraries and cultural hubs including arenas where concerts and sporting events are held. 18 other states have also ordered that their schools be closed as well.
Many have commented that life as we know has come to an abrupt standstill as a potential complete lockdown is always looming above.
“I feel like we are living in a wartime era, when food and other products are becoming scarce, when we have to wait in long lines. There is most definitely an apocalyptic aura all around us. It does feel like a biblical plague is upon us; kind of like an end of times scenario,” said Yeshaya Muscavero, an Orthodox Jew from Mexico who now lives in New York City. He added, “We must all look into ourselves and try to become better people. We must pray fervently to G-d for mercy so that this plague comes to an end.”
Stores have been literally inundated with anxious consumers seeking to buy massive amounts of provisions and supplies that will last for at least several months. Long lines awaited shoppers and only 20 people were allowed in stores at a time to avoid overcrowding and to adhere to the newly established “social distancing” guidelines.
VOA News reported that as normal life in the United States quickly came to a halt with mandated closures of businesses beginning in many states while stock prices on Wall Street plunged Monday.
Despite an extraordinary move taken by the Federal Reserve a day earlier to boost investor confidence, the Dow Jones Industrial on Monday dived 3,000 points to close 13 percent lower — the worst trading day since the start of the coronavirus crisis.
“The market will be very strong as soon as we get rid of the virus,” Trump replied when told of the closing numbers while he was still at the briefing room lectern.
The Fed, which is America’s central bank, on Sunday made an emergency cut to interest rates, bringing them to near zero, amid deep concern that the coronavirus pandemic will hit corporate revenue globally. VOA reported that despite the move, Asia markets fell sharply in Monday trading, a harbinger of what would happen hours later on Wall Street.
Both Trump and the White House economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, acknowledged on Monday the country could be headed into a recession, according to the VOA report.
“No question about it, we are going to be challenged. I’m not going to label it one thing or another,” Kudlow responded to a question from VOA.
Also on Tuesday, the AP reported that the Trump administration is quite concerned about the economic impact that the deadly virus will have on the pocket books of Americans who are suffering due to job losses and varied financial challenges that have emerged as a result of the slowing economy.
In the next two weeks, the Trump administration wants the government to send checks out to Americans to help keep them financially solvent and to cover their basic bills, according to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.
“The president has instructed me we have to do this now,” Mnuchin said at the White House briefing. He didn’t give details except to say the amount should be significant and millionaires would not get it. The proposal requires approval from Congress, as was reported by AP.
“We want to make sure Americans get money in their pockets quickly,” Mnuchin said on Tuesday. The stock market rose during the briefing after a savage drop Monday.
The AP reported that the White House on Tuesday was asking Congress to approve a massive emergency rescue package to help businesses as well as taxpayers cope with the economic crisis that is paired with the pandemic.
Mnuchin planned to outline that roughly $850 billion package to Senate Republicans at a private lunch, with officials aiming to have Congress approve it this week. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, opening the Senate on Tuesday morning, promised swift action, as was reported by the AP.
“The Senate will not adjourn until we have passed significant and bold new steps above and beyond what the House has passed to help our strong nation and our strong underlying economy weather this storm,” McConnell said.
Bigger than the 2008 bank bailout or the 2009 recovery act, the White House proposal aims to provide a massive tax cut for wage-earners, $50 billion for the airline industry and relief for small businesses, according to the AP report.
Congress was being asked to approve the most far-reaching economic rescue package since the Great Recession of 2008, as was reported by the AP.
“There’s great spirit” among lawmakers, President Trump said at the White House briefing as he outlined several elements of the rescue plan. “I can say that for Republicans and Democrats.”
The debate is sure to revive the sharp divisions over the costly bank bailout and economic recovery of the Obama and Bush era, as was reported by the AP. Particularly striking is McConnell’s urgency after having adjourned the Senate over the weekend while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi muscled through an aid package, was reported by AP.
AP reported that angry senators from both parties boarded planes returning to a changed Washington, as Trump declared a state of emergency, the virus spread and the economic free-fall worsened. Despite federal guidelines against so many people gathering, senators had no choice but to convene. Legislating cannot be done from home. The House is on a recess.
The White House hopes the measure will pass quickly, possibly this week, an enormous political undertaking as the administration scrambled to contain the economic fallout of the severe disruptions to American life from the outbreak.
The rush to inject cash and resources into the economy is an effort unlike any since the 2008 economic crisis, with political and economic interventions and eye-popping sums to try to protect Americans from the health and financial fallout, as was reported by AP.
Trump on Monday spoke with other G-7 leaders to coordinate action in response to COVID-19, according to the VOA report.
“It was a very good discussion,” said Trump, describing great camaraderie among the leaders, although he gave no specifics on the outcome.
After the G-7 call, Trump held a similar call with state governors on the same topic.
The president acknowledged he told the governors that if they are able to acquire needed ventilators and respirators for their hospitals quicker than they can get them from the federal government, they should do that.
Governments around the planet are racing to stockpile as many ventilators as possible. But since only a relative handful of companies manufacture them, shortages – and the accompanying anxiety – are thus far the order of the day.
On Monday, President Trump did what he always does – removed obstacles in order to improve efficiency – by making it easier for governors to secure ventilators by purchasing directly rather than waiting to go through the federal government.
“Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves,” the president told a collection of governors on a conference call. “We will be backing you, but try getting it yourselves. Point of sales, much better, much more direct if you can get it yourself.”
“The suggestion surprised some of the governors,” noted msn.com, “who have been scrambling to contain the outbreak and are increasingly looking to the federal government for help with equipment, personnel and financial aid. Last Wednesday, Mr. Trump directed his labor secretary to increase the availability of respirators, and he has generally played down fears of shortages.”
In Germany, leaders asked for as many as 10,000 of them from manufacturer Drägerwerk AG. In Italy, with 25,000 people infected and 1,800 (and counting) dead, an order has gone out for an additional 5,000 ventilators. And over in the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Boris Johnson called on makers there to assist in speeding production not only of ventilators but an assortment of other types of medical equipment.
“We’ve been buying up ventilators since this started,” Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Sunday in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. “We’ve got high-quality engineering in this country and we want anybody who has the manufacturing capability to turn to a manufacturer of ventilators.”
“In the U.S., ECRI, a nonprofit that evaluates the safety and quality of medical equipment, has registered an increase in “rush requests” from hospitals asking it to analyze proposed supply contracts from ventilator manufacturers, Chief Executive Marcus Schabacker said in an interview” with the Wall Street Journal. “Some hospitals are pulling forward buying decisions in trying to get ready,” he said.
The units cost as much as $50,000 each. They are used to push air into patients’ lungs once it has been determined that they can no longer breathe unaided. With no cure for the Coronavirus yet developed, the machines quite literally mean the different between life and death for infected patients.
The United States has more than 4,200 coronavirus cases in all but one of the 50 states.
So far, there have been more than 80 deaths reported from the disease in the country, as was reported by VOA News
On Monday, the White House took measures to screen journalists entering the briefing room.
Before going through the iron gate on the north side of the executive mansion, all journalists had their foreheads swabbed with a digital thermometer to ensure they are not running a fever, as was reported by VOA. They were instructed to briefly place the back of one hand to the forehead to ensure an accurate reading, a scene that captured the sense of anxiety.
Once the correspondents passed through the normal security screening and walked down the driveway to the West Wing, they noticed an emergency modification to the seating in the White House briefing room.
The White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), which assigns the room’s seating, decided late Sunday without any direction from the press office to enforce social distancing.
VOA also reported that U.S. health officials say the first human trial has begun to test an experimental coronavirus vaccine, as scientists race to find treatments for the pandemic.
Scientists at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Research Institute in Seattle gave the first shots Monday to a small group of healthy people.
The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) said the trial would involve 45 healthy adult volunteers ages 18 to 55 years old who would be given the experimental vaccine over a six-week period, as was reported by the AP.
Researchers say there is no risk of the patients in the trial contracting coronavirus because the injections do not contain the actual virus.
They say the experimental vaccine contains only part of the virus’ genetic code pertaining to a protein called the “spike” which protrudes from the surface of the new coronavirus and allows the virus to invade human cells.
On the foreign front, World Israel News reported that the number of coronavirus cases in Israel has hit 323, up from 304 just since Tuesday morning, as was reported to them by Ministry of Health.
Of the cases, five are in serious condition and 11 have recovered. Most have only light symptoms, as was reported by WIN. In order to free up hospital space and resources, Defense Minister Naftali Bennett ordered on Sunday the establishment of three facilities to be used for non-severe coronavirus cases.
“Already, we are looking for locations,” Bennett said. “I want the conditions to be good. Those who are carriers and in excellent health, most of them young people, will be sent there.”
Calcalist reports the “facilities” will be hotels, with the Dan Panorama in Tel Aviv expected to go into use for coronavirus cases on Tuesday, shortly followed by the Dan Jerusalem and the Dan Panorama Hotel in Haifa.
World Israel News also reported that according to Bennett, the health care system will determine who goes to a “corona hotel.”
“It could be that the healthcare system will decide to send some of the carriers into home-quarantine, for example, single people or those who have large homes,” he said.
With roughly 50,000 Israeli citizens under home quarantine, the defense minister admitted that something needed to be changed.
“There are many issues,” Bennett said. “Those who do not live in a villa but in a three-four bedroom apartment will very likely infect their family” and “medical monitoring is difficult” as each individual must be tested and wait for the results to be released.
On Monday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced new guidelines in an effort to thwart the spread of the deadly virus.
WIN reported that he emphasized that the country is not in complete lockdown, but he will use his authority to impose general closures on specific areas with high concentrations of coronavirus cases if the situation necessitates it.
The AP reported on Tuesday that Iran issued its most dire warning yet about the outbreak of the new coronavirus ravaging the country, suggesting “millions” could die in the Islamic Republic if the public keeps traveling and ignoring health guidance.
A state television journalist who also is a medical doctor gave the warning only hours after hard-line Shi’ite faithful the previous night pushed their way into the courtyards of two major shrines that had just been closed over fears of the virus, as was reported by the AP.
Roughly nine out of 10 of the over 18,000 cases of the new virus confirmed across the Middle East come from Iran, where authorities denied for days the risk the outbreak posed, according to the AP report. Officials have now implemented new checks for people trying to leave major cities ahead of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, on Friday, but have hesitated to quarantine the areas.
That’s even as the death toll in Iran saw another 13% increase Tuesday. Health Ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said the virus had killed 135 more people to raise the total to 988 amid over 16,000 cases. Jordan meanwhile prepared for a shutdown of its own over the virus, banning gatherings drawing more than 10 people.
AP reported that the Iranian state TV journalist, Dr. Afruz Eslami, cited a study by Tehran’s prestigious Sharif University of Technology, which offered three scenarios. If people begin to cooperate now, Iran will see 120,000 infections and 12,000 deaths before the outbreak is over, she said. If they offer medium cooperation, there will be 300,000 cases and 110,000 deaths, she said.
But if people fail to follow any guidance, it could collapse Iran’s already-strained medical system, Eslami said. If the “medical facilities are not sufficient, there will be 4 million cases, and 3.5 million people will die,” she said. 
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Eslami did not elaborate on what metrics the study used, but even reporting it on Iran’s tightly controlled state television represented a major change for a country whose officials had for days denied the severity of the crisis, as was reported by AP.
