Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Some Local Governments Try To Address Raising Economic Concern By Halting Evictions
The landlord was knocking, but Jill Ferguson had made a promise to her children. She was 66 years old with chronic bronchitis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), someone far more likely to die if she contracted the coronavirus. Ferguson had been self-isolating for days inside her Wisconsin duplex, so on Monday, she waited until the knocking stopped before she opened the door. Taped onto it was an eviction notice. 鈥淩emove from the following described premises on or before April 15,鈥 it read. (Contrera and Jan, 3/22)
Cities such as New York and Los Angeles enacted eviction prohibitions over the past week, and dozens of other municipalities and court systems have followed. The sheriff of San Francisco said he would not enforce eviction orders until further notice. And on Wednesday, the state of Washington, one of the hardest hit by the virus, declared an eviction moratorium for 30 days. The patchwork of local rules and exceptions for evictions has housing advocates pushing for a unified federal action and some federal housing measures are under way. (Parker, 3/22)
How do you send money en masse to people in the midst of a pandemic? In a world roughly remade by virus every few days, the federal government鈥檚 desperate attempt to shore up a plummeting economy changes shape by the hour. But one partial solution has surged to the fore: sending money directly to Americans. (Okun, 3/22)
When New York City closed its public schools, Cindy Urena, a home health aide for Sunnyside Community Services in Queens, faced a choice: stop seeing a client with severe epilepsy or leave her 7-year-old daughter alone at home. Ms. Urena, 39, earns $15 an hour, and like half of New York City鈥檚 direct care workers, relies on food stamps even when she is working. She made her choice. Now she has no income at all. (Leland, 3/22)
The American economy has stopped working. We鈥檙e going to try turning it off and back on again. With confirmed cases of the coronavirus escalating rapidly, government officials have almost overnight switched off activity in large sectors of the United States. They want as few people as possible in close contact with one another in order to slow the pandemic, which may be even more widespread than official statistics suggest. (Tankersley, 3/22)
As recently as a month ago, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority was talking about increasing service, having finally turned a corner after years of precipitous ridership declines. The gains were wiped out in a couple of weeks as the coronavirus pandemic swept the country, shutting down normal life and crippling Metro and transit systems nationwide as people teleworked and stayed home out of fear, by government order or because they had been laid off. (Lazo and George, 3/22)
As state health officials warn of exponential increases in the number of confirmed cases across Pennsylvania, there is growing anxiety among workers such as first responders, nurses, doctors, cleaning staff, cashiers, and truck drivers who are part of the essential economy. The state Department of Labor and Industry told workers March 16 that those who contract the coronavirus on the job might be eligible for workers鈥 compensation benefits. But legal and public health experts say that help may be very hard to obtain. (Moss, 3/22)
The most brutal stretch for global markets since the financial crisis likely isn鈥檛 over yet, say investors and analysts who believe it is too early to assess the possible scale of economic damage from the coronavirus. In just a few weeks, U.S. stocks have lost roughly a third of their value. In recent weeks, investors have even fled assets like U.S. government bonds and gold that typically do well during times of turmoil, underscoring the extent of the panic and the shock to once-robust investor sentiment delivered by the global health emergency. (Hirtenstein and Otani, 3/22)
U.S. stock-index futures, global stocks and oil prices fell early Monday, rattled by the coronavirus pandemic and delay in Washington over an economic rescue package. The number of confirmed novel coronavirus cases world-wide more than doubled in a week to nearly 330,000 Sunday, with deaths surpassing 14,000. U.S. infections topped 32,000, jumping 10-fold from a week earlier. (Chiu, 3/23)
