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President Donald Trump urged Americans on Monday to halt most social activities for 15 days and not congregate in groups larger than 10 people in a newly aggressive effort to reduce the spread of the coronavirus in the United States. Announcing new guidelines from his coronavirus task force, the president said people should avoid discretionary travel and not go to bars, restaurants, food courts or gyms. (Mason and Holland, 3/16)

Faced with a reality that the nation he oversees needs to take dramatic action or follow in the footsteps of deeply troubled nations abroad, the president took on a newly somber tone about a virus outbreak he spent months downplaying. “I’m glad to see that you’re practicing social distancing,” Trump quipped as he stepped up to the lectern in an unscheduled appearance at the sparsely populated James S. Brady briefing room in the White House, where reporters were arranged with open seats between them. It was a short moment of levity for Trump before he laid out dramatic new guidelines aimed at curbing the spread of the virus and saving lives. (McGraw, Orr and Kumar, 3/16)

The national guidelines, which also advise home-schooling and the curtailing of visits to nursing homes and long-term care facilities, are the most robust response so far from the Trump administration. But the guidelines, which officials described as a trial set, are not mandatory and fall short of a national quarantine and internal travel restrictions, which many health officials had urged. And they do not reflect the urgency of actions taken around the world as governments in Italy, France, Spain and elsewhere began imposing stringent lockdowns on citizens. Even within the United States, local governments were imposing shelter-at-home orders and police-enforced quarantine zones. (Rogers and Cochrane, 3/16)

But where did that number come from? The variations in crowd size requirements and recommendations from assorted government authorities may add to confusion about what people should do to protect themselves and prevent transmission of disease. “It feels like somebody is using a Magic 8-Ball to make these decisions,” said Kelly Hills, a bioethicist and co-founder of the consulting firm Rogue Bioethics. “There is no consistency. There doesn’t even seem to be consistency in who’s making these decisions.” (Sheikh, 3/16)

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, clarified after Trump’s remarks that the guidelines would not necessarily last until the summer months but rather that timeline was one potential trajectory of the coronavirus outbreak. “The guidelines are a 15 day trial guideline to be reconsidering,” Fauci said. “It isn’t that these guidelines are going to be in effect until July. What the president was saying is that the trajectory of the outbreak may go until then.” (Samuels and Chalfant, 3/16)

The president, when asked when the pandemic would subside, said that “if we do a really good job" the crisis could pass by the height of summer. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the administration's infectious disease expert, did not challenge that claim. Trump's prediction was far less optimistic than his earlier ones, when he insisted it could be over in weeks. He also acknowledged that the virus may send the nation's economy into a recession, a potentially brutal blow for an incumbent seeking reelection. (Lemire, Taylor and Colvin, 3/17)

“We have an invisible enemy,” the president said at a news conference, where he released guidelines that called for people to avoid gathering in groups of more than 10 people, steer clear of eating and drinking at bars, restaurants and food courts, and work or attend school from home whenever possible. “This is a bad one. This is a very bad one.” (McCaskill, Kenen and Cancryn, 3/16)

Mr. Trump said he wasn’t currently considering a nationwide lockdown or domestic travel restrictions. He said the outbreak could last until July or August. “It’s bad, but we’re going to be, hopefully, a best case, not a worst case,” he said. (Ansari, Restuccia, Lin and Lucey, 3/16)

"At this point, not nationwide, but ... we may look at certain areas, certain hotspots, as they call them. We'll be looking at that," Trump said during a White House press briefing. But the President added that no decisions had been taken regarding a national curfew. "We haven't really determined to do that at all and hopefully we won't have to," he said. "That's a very big step." "It's a step we can take, but we have not decided to do it," he added. (Starr, Klein and Vazquez, 3/16)

President Trump for weeks dismissed the danger of the novel coronavirus. He distracted himself by stoking unrelated feuds and nursing grievances. He shared little concrete information about the spreading pandemic, and much of what he did share was false. Governors and mayors, as well as leaders of businesses large and small, stepped into the leadership vacuum to make difficult decisions affecting their constituents, employees or customers. In the absence of unambiguous guidance from the president for the citizens he was elected to lead, the frustration of governors boiled over. (Rucker, 3/16)

President Trump told reporters Monday that he would rate his administration’s response to the coronavirus a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10. “I’d rate it a 10,” Trump said at a White House press briefing Monday when asked by a reporter how he would rate his response to the pandemic. The president pointed to his administration’s decision early on to restrict travel from China, where the coronavirus originated. (Chalfant, 3/16)

The virus, which has killed 7,000 people worldwide and sickened over 4,000 Americans, has spread rapidly throughout the United States in recent weeks. Hundreds of local governments had already banned public gatherings and shuttered schools, restaurants, and bars. Public health officials have uniformly urged residents to practice social distancing — all in an effort to slow the rate of new infections and ensure the nation’s health care system maintains capacity to care for the severely ill. (Facher, 3/16)

Holding fundraisers. Shaking hands. Taking photographs. All of these would have been a very normal part of life for any politician, except that President Donald Trump and members of his administration, including Vice President Mike Pence, did so amid the spread of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States and despite advice from top public health officials to the contrary. (Rubin, Kim and Steakin, 3/17)

There will be a "dramatic" change in the spread of coronavirus if Americans follow guidelines issued by the White House on Monday to fight virus, a member of the White House coronavirus task force said. "If everybody in America does what we ask for over the next 15 days, we will see a dramatic difference," Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response coordinator, said at a White House briefing also addressed by President Donald Trump. (3/16)

Deborah Birx, MD, the coronavirus response coordinator, said the recommendation came from the latest modeling studies. She also issued a personal plea to millennials, the largest population demographic in the United States, composed of young adults aged 25 to 40. Though that population is not at great risk for severe complications from the virus, they are the most mobile in society and the most likely to spread the virus to vulnerable populations. (Soucheray, 3/18)

As hospitals grapple with more coughing and feverish emergency-room visitors than they can test, the White House has deployed a SWAT team of fixers and technocrats to ramp up coronavirus testing, in an implicit acknowledgment that the Trump administration’s response has continued to fall short of what is needed. About 100 staffers and outside advisers, split between the health department and the White House, are currently working on teams to rapidly increase supplies of test kits and cope with shortages across the country, said four people with knowledge of the strategy. (Diamond, 3/16)

Surgeon General Jerome Adams on Monday defended the administration’s more forceful federal guidance aimed at countering the coronavirus pandemic, but warned that the United States is not an “authoritarian nation” that can stamp out the public health crisis without state and local involvement. “We are not an authoritarian nation, so we have to be careful when we say, ‘Let’s do what China did. Let’s do what South Korea did,’” Adams said during an interview on “Fox & Friends,” lumping South Korea’s democratic republic together with China’s unelected communist government. (Forgey, 3/16)

The Trump administration has yet to issue clear guidance to federal employees nationwide on whether they can work at home as the coronavirus pandemic escalates. The result has been an ad hoc mix of policies that varies by agency and has left many workers across the country with conflicting instructions about when and how they should report to their offices and if they can telework. The civilian federal workforce consists of about 2 million people, not counting the United States Postal Service, with about 15% based in the Washington, D.C., area. (Torbati, 3/16)

The streets of the nation’s capital were unusually empty on Monday after the White House encouraged as many federal employees as possible to work from home in the latest step to slow the coronavirus pandemic. The White House Office of Management and Budget issued a memo Sunday night asking federal agencies to offer “maximum telework flexibilities.” That followed guidance on Saturday recommending only “mission-critical” travel for federal workers. (Kiernan, 3/16)

For weeks, some of Fox News’s most popular hosts downplayed the threat of the coronavirus, characterizing it as a conspiracy by media organizations and Democrats to undermine President Trump. Fox News personalities such as Sean Hannity and Laura In­graham accused the news media of whipping up “mass hysteria” and being “panic pushers.” Fox Business host Trish Regan called the alleged media-Democratic alliance “yet another attempt to impeach the president.” (Farhi and Ellison, 3/16)

Last Monday, Tucker Carlson delivered a warning on his Fox News show. He said the coronavirus posed a great threat. He said it was much more severe than the flu. And he said that people have "spent weeks minimizing what is clearly a very serious problem." While he delivered that monologue, his colleague Trish Regan was on Fox Business dismissing coronavirus as nothing more than an attempt to impeach Trump. (Darcy, 3/17)

President Trump told a group of governors on Monday morning that they should not wait for the federal government to fill the growing demand for respirators needed to treat people with coronavirus. “Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves,” Mr. Trump told the governors during the conference call, a recording of which was shared with The New York Times. “We will be backing you, but try getting it yourselves. Point of sales, much better, much more direct if you can get it yourself.” (Martin, 3/16)

The Trump administration's coronavirus task force on Monday issued new guidelines aimed at reducing the spread of COVID-19 and discussed ongoing efforts to increase the availability of testing and medical supplies. President Donald Trump told governors during a conference call earlier in the day that they shouldn't wait for the federal government to provide them with medical equipment like respirators if they can source them on their own, which surprised some governors, The New York Times reported. (Brady, 3/16)

As the coronavirus has swept across New York, officials have become increasingly alarmed about a bleak reality: The state may not have enough ventilators for everybody who could need one. It is still possible that the state could slow down the spread of the virus enough to curb the demand for ventilators, the machines that help the sickest patients to breathe. But a panel convened a few years ago by the state found that in the worst-case scenario of a flulike pandemic, New York could be short by as many as 15,783 ventilators a week at the peak of the crisis. (Rosenthal and Goldstein, 3/17)

Hospitals preparing for an influx of coronavirus patients are canceling some surgeries and moving routine care to virtual visits, an effort to make room for those critically ill and prevent infections as the global pandemic spreads nationwide. A growing number of hospitals, including Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian, the main facility of the University of California, San Francisco and some major systems in the hard-hit Seattle area, are starting to put off surgeries that aren’t urgent or emergencies. In addition to freeing up capacity, doctors say they don’t want to expose patients and workers to potential infection risk. (Evans and Wilde Mathews, 3/16)

U.S. hospitals, anticipating a need for beds as more people are diagnosed with coronavirus, are postponing elective surgeries, while some patients, leery of going to a hospital, are canceling appointments themselves. Several hospitals in the hard-hit Seattle area, including EvergreenHealth, have suspended elective procedures like knee replacements for the next 30 days. Emergency surgeries like appendectomies or a broken wrist that needs surgery will continue. (Beasley, 3/16)

COVID-19 could be a double whammy for hospitals' finances in that they're putting off high-margin surgeries to treat expensive, complex coronavirus patients with no way to predict reimbursement. "It probably will be significant in most cases," Chip Kahn, CEO of the Federation of American Hospitals, said of the novel coronavirus' financial impact on hospitals. "In some situations, if we're taking about two or three months of this … you could see many hospitals with their backs to the wall." (Bannow, 3/16)

Some New Orleans-area hospitals are considering postponing planned elective, non-emergency surgeries as the region deals with a surge in the number of coronavirus cases, as guidelines have been released recommending a temporary halt to those procedures to stop the spread of the coronavirus. (Reimann, 3/16)

Hospital associations in states with the largest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases said the federal funding in the pipeline so far won't cover their needs, and they are unsure when or how more assistance will arrive. Hospitals have not yet borne the crush of COVID-19 patients that many experts fear could be coming, and that uptick will require more financial assistance. (Cors, 3/16)

As the novel coronavirus spreads across the region and hospitals shore up plans for an expected surge in severe cases, New Orleans city health officials have offered the most comprehensive view of preparedness yet. The No. 1 concern is a lack of testing kits and the long turnaround for results as demand rises, according to Sarah Babcock, Director of Policy and Emergency Preparedness for the New Orleans Health Department. Protective gear is also in short supply. (Woodruff, Williams and Myers, 3/16)

The Department of Veterans Affairs serves as a backup health system in times of crisis, but its mission statement for this crucial role was deleted from the agency’s website Friday as many in the country grew concerned that the coronavirus could overload civilian hospitals. VA’s three missions are to serve veterans through care, research and training in its behemoth health system. But in 1982, Congress mandated what has become known as VA’s “fourth mission”: to absorb non-veteran civilian patients in the event that hospitals overflow with patients in an emergency, such as a pandemic like the coronavirus. (Horton, 3/16)

Top health care officials said Monday that there is not enough stockpiled medical equipment like masks, gowns and gloves to fulfill the anticipated need of nation's health care system as it deals with the coronavirus. Officials from the Department of Health and Human Services told medical professionals on a conference call Monday that there was not enough personal protective equipment in the Strategic National Stockpile to fulfill anticipated gaps in state and local supplies, according to a source who was on the call. The call was confirmed to CNN by a Department of Health and Human Services official. (Holmes, 3/17)

Emergency medical personnel and first responders across the country are in the midst of a major mobilization in preparation for the spread of the novel coronavirus, amid ongoing concerns over potential shortages in staff and protective equipment, officials told ABC News. "I think our biggest concern, of course, is that they have appropriate personal protective equipment and that they go into every emergency call prepared for this type of situation," said Leslee Stein-Spencer, a program manager for the National Association of State EMS Officials (NASEMSO). (Barr and Mallin, 3/17)

If you’re exhibiting coronavirus symptoms and meet the criteria, you should get tested.But if you live in rural Presidio County, on the western end of the Texas-Mexico border, be prepared to travel. County residents who are severely ill are being told to go to Big Bend Regional Center in Alpine, Texas, which is nearly 90 miles away from the city of Presidio. The hospital will stabilize those patients before sending them nearly 200 miles to El Paso, according to a hospital spokeswoman. (Simpson, 3/17)

In an urgent response to the coronavirus threat, the state medical board voted Monday to let doctors treat more patients online, made it easier for them to practice at multiple hospitals, and vowed to speed up the licensing of medical school graduates. The board voted 4-0 to approve the three measures in an emergency meeting held via conference call. The provisions are intended to boost the number of doctors available to treat patients for the coronavirus and other diseases, and to curb exposure of patients and health care workers to the virus. (Saltzman, 3/16)

Underscoring the continued challenges of widespread coronavirus testing, three of Georgia’s largest hospital systems urged people on Monday not to come to hospitals to be tested if they have mild or moderate symptoms. “Inundating hospitals and doctors’ offices for testing by patients who can be managed at home, we believe, will worsen the impact of COVID-19,” read the statement from Emory Healthcare, Piedmont Healthcare and Wellstar Health System. (Trubey, 3/17)

Some Georgia hospitals are already straining to cope as a surge of people concerned they may have the coronavirus swamp emergency rooms and more beds are filled with suspected cases. The state Department of Public Health on Monday increased Georgia’s count of confirmed cases to 121, but that number is expected to swell as testing, which is still very limited, becomes more widely available. Already, one Georgia hospital is awaiting on test results for more than 50 severely ill patients. (Hart and Teegardin, 3/16)

The governors of Maryland and New York on Monday moved to dramatically increase the number of hospital beds in their states ahead of what they fear will be a wave of coronavirus victims that threatens to overwhelm the health care system. In separate announcements, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) said they had ordered state health officials to reopen closed hospitals and to convert other facilities in order to accommodate patients. (Wilson, 3/16)

A potential shortage of cotton swabs and other basic supplies needed for coronavirus testing is emerging as a new threat to the Trump administration’s plans to roll out high-volume testing to 2,000 sites across the country by the end of the week. President Donald Trump and other top administration officials have repeatedly said that millions of Americans could be tested in the coming weeks. But behind the scenes, some officials are warning the nation’s commercial labs that kinks in the supply chain for basic lab materials are the latest obstacle to broader testing. (Lim, 3/16)

Delays in testing in the United States have set back the nation’s response to the pandemic, even though its first case was discovered around the same time that South Korea’s was. But part of the problem in the United States has also been gaps created by the way the state and federal agencies report the data. An internet community effort, called the COVID Tracking Project, is attempting to provide a fuller picture of testing in the United States. According to the tracker — which collects information directly from state health departments, local news reports and live news conferences — at least 41,000 people have been tested in the United States, much higher than official C.D.C. figures. (Buchanan, Lai and McCann, 3/17)

In response to a dire shortage of tests for detecting the fast-moving coronavirus, the Food and Drug Administration is giving states new powers to authorize laboratories to develop their own diagnostic. And the FDA also approved new tests that will be distributed by LabCorp (LH) and Hologic (HOLX), two of the largest manufacturers. (Silverman, 3/16)

In a conference call with reporters Monday night, Dr. Hahn described the measures as a “flexible regulatory approach” intended to strike a balance between speed and the FDA’s regulatory oversight to achieve precision of tests. Dr. Hahn said private companies that make the lab tests will need to file evidence of their accuracy with the FDA within about 15 days of release. (Burton, 3/16)

The director of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday said governments need to do more to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said social distancing measures have been ramping up but said those efforts alone will not be enough. "We have not seen an urgent enough escalation in testing, isolation and contact tracing — which is the backbone of the response," Tedros said during a news conference. (Weixel, 3/16)

When Olfert Landt heard about the novel coronavirus, he got busy. Founder of a small Berlin-based company, the ponytailed 54-year-old first raced to help German researchers come up with a diagnostic test and then spurred his company to produce and ship more than 1.4 million tests by the end of February for the World Health Organization. “My wife and I have been working 16 hours a day, seven days a week, ever since,” Landt said by phone about 1 a.m. Friday, Berlin time. “Our days are full.” (Whoriskey and Satija, 3/16)

Screening for the coronavirus has continued to ramp up in Massachusetts in recent days, with drive-through testing stations operating in Hyannis and Middleton, as Governor Charlie Baker’s administration began providing more data about the scope of its efforts to track and slow the pandemic. But even as private labs helped increase capacity, the state remained far below the 1,000 tests a day public health experts warned were necessary to assess the full extent of Covid-19′s spread. The state’s increased transparency did offer a fuller picture of efforts to track and diagnose the virus. (Ryan and Lazar, 3/16)

Returning home after a workday last week, Kang Min-kyung stared at a jarring notice taped to her front door: “We’d like you to get tested for coronavirus.” A fellow tenant of her downtown Seoul apartment building had tested positive earlier in the day. Her city district’s “Disaster and Safety Headquarters” recommended she get examined within 48 hours and provided the address for a nearby medical facility. Ms. Kang went that night. The free test took 10 minutes. (Yoon and Martin, 3/16)

Kaiser Health News: Biden Falsely Blames Trump Administration For Rejecting WHO Coronavirus Test Kits (That Were Never Offered)

During Sunday night’s debate, while leveling criticism at President Donald Trump’s handling of the national response to the coronavirus pandemic, former Vice President Joe Biden said the Trump administration refused to get coronavirus testing kits from the World Health Organization. “Look, the World Health Organization offered the testing kits that they have available and to give it to us now. We refused them. We did not want to buy them. We did not want to get them from them. We wanted to make sure we had our own,” Biden said. (Knight andGreenberg, 3/16)

Many of us will wonder if we need to be tested for the coronavirus in the coming weeks. Here are the steps you can follow, provided by doctors in the Boston area, in keeping with recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Following these steps will help protect you, your fellow patients and the emergency room staff, who we all need to keep safe and on the job. (Bebinger, 3/16)

With Massachusetts being buffeted by coronavirus-related closures and the statewide caseload nearly topping 200, drive-through testing for the virus is being provided to patients at a community college on Cape Cod, authorities said Monday. Cape Cod Healthcare, in conjunction with the Barnstable County Department of Health and Environment, is providing the service to patients with a doctor’s order, which must come from a doctor within the company’s health system. The service started Monday, according to a joint press release from both organizations. (McDonald, 3/16)

Penn Medicine and Main Line Health on Monday became the latest health systems to announce “drive-through testing” for coronavirus infection. The number of drive-through sites is growing in an effort to make testing safer, faster, and more available. (McCullough, 3/16)

The state-run laboratory that’s testing hundreds of Louisianans for the coronavirus was at risk of losing its license in recent years after federal regulators found problems that could have affected the validity of the tests they were running, according to federal inspection reports. (Gallo, 3/16)

As Detroit health care workers check the city's homeless for fevers, Mayor Mike Duggan slammed the federal government for hindering local officials' efforts to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. "We should have a lot more tools to fight this," Duggan said Monday. "There's no doubt about it, the country was not prepared." (Elrick, 3/16)

Health departments in the United States on Monday reported the largest number of coronavirus-related deaths on any one day since the onset of the outbreak. As of Monday evening, officials had reported 18 people dead, bringing the nationwide total to 85, according to a Washington Post tally. President Trump in a Monday news conference recommended that states with evidence of community transmission of the virus should close schools, as well as bars, restaurants, gyms and other gathering spots. “It isn’t an overreaction,” Anthony S. Fauci, a leading member of the president’s coronavirus task force, said of the recommendations released Monday. (Hawkins, Bellware, Mettler, Beachum, Hassan, Thebault and Armus, 3/16)

US coronavirus cases have now surpassed 4,475 and some officials say the US could end up with a count as high as hard-hit Italy if it doesn't make dramatic changes to the way Americans live, work and play. Governors and city leaders have begun implementing measures to encourage residents to stay home or skip nights out, in an effort to curb the spread of the virus. (Maxouris, 3/17)

Two weeks ago, keeping at a distance from other Americans was merely a suggestion. Now, after US coronavirus cases jumped by more than 3,000 over six days, at least a dozen city and state leaders have turned those suggestions into orders. Public health officials say the US has reached a tipping point -- warning that if residents don't take the call to action seriously, the country may be faced with a scenario similar to the one facing Italy. (Maxouris, 3/17)

The United States’ ability to detect COVID-19 is crucial to understanding how the coronavirus — now confirmed in nearly every state and territory — is spreading. While the Trump administration has promised a mass rollout of tests, supply in the U.S has lagged behind that in other countries, making the scope of the disease harder to track. (3/16)

Since the first U.S. case of the coronavirus was identified in Washington state on Jan. 21, health officials have identified thousands of cases across the United States. By March 16, the virus had expanded its presence from several isolated clusters in Washington, New York and California to 49 states and the District of Columbia. To date, there have been over 70 deaths across the country. (Renken and Wood, 3/16)

More Americans are worried that novel coronavirus is spreading in their communities, as schools shut down and states order closures in an effort to stifle the pandemic. Seventy percent of Americans said they worry that novel coronavirus is escalating in their cities, towns and neighborhoods, according to the latest PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll. That’s up from 44 percent on Feb. 4, according to prior polling. (Santhanam, 3/17)

Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson have been released from a Queensland hospital in Australia and are now in self-quarantine at their home there, a representative for Hanks told CNN on Monday. The couple had been hospitalized in isolation after being diagnosed with novel coronavirus last week. (Melas, 3/16)

The English actor Idris Elba announced on Monday that he had tested positive for the coronavirus, sharing the news with fans in a video that he posted on Twitter. “This morning I tested positive for Covid 19,” Mr. Elba wrote in a post that accompanied the video, referring to the disease caused by the coronavirus. “I feel ok, I have no symptoms so far but have been isolated since I found out about my possible exposure to the virus.” (Ortiz, 3/16)

The House passed by unanimous consent Monday evening the revised coronavirus emergency bill, sending it to the Senate to take up as the coronavirus continues to spread across the U.S. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin worked out the "technical corrections" bill Monday and were able to get it through the House without objection. The Senate could take up the House’s multi-billion package as early as Tuesday. Following meetings with senior administration officials Monday, some Senate Republicans initially reluctant to support the measure seemed to drop their opposition to the proposal. (Bresnahan and Levine, 3/16)

The bill initially passed in a 363-40 vote in the early hours of Saturday morning, but due to a technicality that could not be fixed administratively, it had to be brought back to the floor. (Brufke, 3/16)

The Democratic-led House scaled back a paid-leave program that the chamber had tried to enact days earlier, following pressure from businesses worried about financial burdens from the sweeping bill in response to the coronavirus crisis. In revised legislation that Democratic leaders billed as a technical correction, but represented a significant rewrite, the House modified a program aimed at providing paid leave to people affected by the coronavirus. The new measure would still provide two weeks of sick leave to a wide swath of workers affected by the pandemic, including those who are in quarantine, caring for family members with Covid-19, and those who have children whose schools or day-care centers have closed. (Hughes, Andrews and Davidson, 3/17)

The snag over the House-passed bill reflected the rapidly changing response to the economic impact of the coronavirus. House Democrats and Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin agreed Monday night on six changes to the bill, which passed the House later in the evening without objections, but Senate Republicans refused to say whether they would supported the legislation until they see the final product. “We may go back and forth with the House a little bit,” President Trump said earlier Monday of last-minute negotiations on changes to the House-passed bill. (Haberkorn, 3/16)

Congress’s efforts to quickly enact into law a measure responding to the coronavirus crisis overcame a key hurdle Monday, while leaders also began discussing the contours of a large new stimulus package and took steps to protect lawmakers from contracting the illness. The legislation took on more urgency as the stock market tumbled again, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping 12.9% and schools, restaurants and other businesses closing in major cities nationwide. (Hughes, Restuccia and Lucey, 3/16)

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) says he will no longer try to block House passage of an emergency coronavirus package, setting the stage for the lower chamber to send the bill to the Senate later Monday night. Gohmert, a conservative firebrand, had vowed earlier in the day to block the legislation single-handedly, citing what he considered its harmful effects on small businesses. (Lillis, 3/16)

Congressional leaders and White House officials began work Monday on a massive new coronavirus relief bill that could contain major economic stimulus for corporations and consumers, aiming to move the legislation through the Senate as soon as this week as President Trump warned a recession could be coming. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Congress’ third coronavirus relief bill should include further steps to assist individual Americans and families; actions to secure the economy and small businesses; and additional steps to shore up the health care system and support medical professionals who are expected to be overwhelmed in coming weeks. (Werner, Kane, Stein and Kim, 3/16)

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other top Democrats will roll out their own $750 billion-plus package on Tuesday, and what Trump and Senate Republicans will propose may equal or top that. “I’m not going to comment on the specific numbers right now. I’ll be talking to the Republicans at lunch tomorrow. But it’s a big number,” Mnuchin said after huddling with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other senior Republicans for more than an hour in the Capitol on Monday. “And we’ll be looking for support for small and medium-sized businesses, we’ll be looking for support for certain industries that we’ve talked about that are particularly hard hit. I’ve talked about airlines, hotels, others. And we will be looking at a general stimulus.” (Bresnahan and Gurciullo, 3/16)

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will outline a third coronavirus financial aid package to Senate Republicans on Tuesday as lawmakers begin to home in on what additional legislation will look like. "We'll be looking for support for small- and medium-sized businesses. We'll be looking for support for certain industries that we've talked about that are particularly hard hit. I've talked about airlines, hotels, others. And we will be looking at a general stimulus," Mnuchin told reporters after a meeting with some GOP senators on Monday night. (Carney, 3/16)

President Donald Trump said a House-passed virus relief bill should be altered in the Senate to allow expanded sick leave for workers at large corporations, a move that would threaten to delay final action on the measure. Trump said the Senate may act to make the legislation passed overwhelmingly by the House “even better,” although a change would require both chambers to act before Congress can send the bill to his desk. While the Senate is in Washington this week, the House is on a scheduled week-long break. (Litvan and Dennis, 3/17)

The White House aims to deploy at least $800 billion in aid in the coming weeks to prop up the U.S. economy, as retailers, restaurants, sporting events and other businesses shut down and Americans slow their spending while staying home to guard against the coronavirus pandemic. Among the administration’s targets this week: providing relief in the form of tax deferments, loans or even direct payments to airlines, the hospitality industry and small-to-medium businesses crippled by plunging demand. (Cook and White, 3/16)

With an urgency unseen since the Great Recession, Congress is rushing to develop a sweeping economic lifeline for American households and businesses suddenly capsized by the coronavirus outbreak. Democrats said at least $750 billion would be needed. And top White House officials briefing Senate Republicans at the Capitol said a similar-sized package needs to pass, some suggesting in a matter of days. (3/17)

Reeling from the coronavirus crisis, U.S. airlines are seeking over $50 billion in financial assistance from the government, more than three times the size of the industry’s bailout after the Sept. 11 attacks. The exact form of the aid—and the amount—is under discussion with Trump administration officials and congressional leaders. A potential aid package could include government-backed loans, cash grants and other measures including relief from taxes and fees, according to an airline trade group and others familiar with the discussions. (Sider and Mann, 3/16)

In addition, A4A asked for $29 billion in loans or loan guarantees, a rebate for some federal excise taxes collected from the beginning of the year through the end of March and a repeal of certain excise taxes through the end of 2021. A source with knowledge of negotiations said airports, themselves facing billions of dollars in losses, are expected to request $10 billion in federal assistance. (Gurciullo, 3/16)

U.S. railroad Amtrak said the passenger rail service and its state partners need $1 billion in government assistance after a dramatic decline in travel because of the coronavirus pandemic. Last week, Amtrak said bookings had plunged 50% since the outbreak and forecast losses of hundreds of millions of dollars. (3/16)

A few months ago, the idea of giving every American adult $1,000 cash was a relatively fringe idea in US politics, the pet proposal of long-shot presidential candidate Andrew Yang and almost no one else in elected office. The coronavirus crisis and fears of a resulting recession have changed that situation basically overnight. While Americans received checks as part of the response to recessions in 2001 and 2008, those were sent out as rebates or refunds to taxpayers. Never before have all Americans, regardless of income, gotten checks. On Monday, Sen. Mitt Romney, the Utah Republican and former GOP presidential nominee, called for $1,000 cash payments to every American adult as coronavirus measures to keep people in their homes threaten to put millions out of work. (Matthews, 3/16)

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said Monday he wants to give monthly checks to low-income and middle-class Americans so they can afford necessities during the coronavirus outbreak. "Let’s cut out employers as the middle men and get relief to people not in weeks but in days," Cotton wrote in a Medium post outlining his proposals for a Senate bill. "We should send relief directly to American families most likely to be in need — those in the bottom and middle tax brackets — to pay for rent, groceries, childcare, and other necessary expenses, as well as to spend at local businesses that are hurting during this crisis." (Seipel, 3/16)

The first testing in humans of an experimental vaccine for the new coronavirus began on Monday, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases announced. The main goal of this first set of tests is to find out if the potential vaccine is safe. If it is, later study will determine how well it works. The trial was “launched in record speed,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the institute’s director, said in a statement. (Grady, 3/16)

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the NIH, said the study began at the Kaiser Permanente National Health Institute in Seattle and that four people were given the vaccine on Monday. The NIAID, which is funding the research, said that as far as it knows, these are the first people to get the vaccine. The vaccine is known as mRNA-1273 and was developed by scientists at NIAID and those at Moderna. Shares of the biotechnology firm soared 24% to $26.49 on Monday. (Burton and Loftus, 3/16)

Researchers on Monday administered the first shot in a trial for a potential vaccine for the novel coronavirus, federal officials said. The trial is taking place at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle and aims to enroll 45 healthy adults over a six-week period, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Study participants will receive two doses of the vaccine approximately 28 days apart. (Weixel, 3/16)

U.S. drugmaker Pfizer Inc has signed a deal with Germany's BioNTech SE to co-develop a potential vaccine for the coronavirus using BioNTech's mRNA-based drug development platform, the companies said on Tuesday. The drugmakers will start the collaboration immediately and have signed a letter of intent for the vaccine's distribution outside China, they said in a joint statement. (3/17)

The biotechnology firm Regeneron said it has now developed hundreds of potential medicines that could work against the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19, and that it may enter clinical trials by early summer. Regeneron’s drugs are what are known as monoclonal antibodies, proteins produced by the immune system that can neutralize pathogens. Regeneron’s antibodies are made in mice that have been genetically modified to have human-like immune systems, which means that, when they are given to a patient, his or her immune system will not attack the antibody. (Herper, 3/17)

The cost of a coronavirus-related hospitalization for people with job-based health insurance could exceed $20,000, according to an analysis by the Peterson Center on Healthcare and Kaiser Family Foundation. While employers would pick up most of that tab, employees could face out of pocket costs of nearly $1,500, researchers estimated. (Livingston, 3/16)

If we are relying on social or physical distancing to slow down infection, the prevailing optimistic guess among experts on when the virus will abate is about two months: significantly earlier than Mr. Trump’s prediction. “I’d say the beginning of May we’re going to feel like we’re coming out of this,” said Morgan Katz, an assistant professor of infectious disease at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “That’s my hope.” To make loose predictions on how long this outbreak and societal disruption might last in the United States, she and many other experts are turning to China. (Nierenberg, 3/16)

How long are we going to have to keep this up? The closed schools, working from home, six feet of personal space and zombie-apocalypse empty streets? It’s the question now preoccupying America as millions of parents silently scream it into the void amid the coronavirus pandemic. But it is an especially hard one for science to answer. The best and most honest reply, according to epidemiologists and virologists, is simple: “It depends.” It’s not going to be over anytime soon — a matter of months rather than weeks. And these are the key factors that will determine just how many months. (Wan, 3/16)

Six counties in the San Francisco metro area made headlines when they announced Monday they were ordering all their residents to “shelter in place” in response to the novel coronavirus. The sweeping proclamation is the most striking example to date of state and local governments in the United States taking sweeping action to halt the spread of the novel coronavirus and to limit the impact of the disease it causes, Covid-19. While the Bay Area is the first region in the U.S. to issue such an order, a number of states have mandated school and business closures and vastly curtailed nearly all major events. (Florko, 3/17)

In a rare piece of good news about Covid-19, a team of infectious disease experts calculates that the fatality rate in people who have symptoms of the disease caused by the new coronavirus is about 1.4%. Although that estimate applies specifically to Wuhan, the Chinese city where the outbreak began, and is based on data from there, it offers a guide to the rest of the world, where many countries might see even lower death rates. (Begley, 3/16)

Although it’s impossible to say how many Americans will die because of the new coronavirus, under a reasonable set of assumptions the number of fatalities could be high — potentially in the hundreds of thousands or more. Deaths on that scale are not easy to grasp. To put the estimates in context, we’re comparing the possible toll with other leading causes of death in the United States in 2018, the most recent year with data available. We’ve started with an estimate from a Nebraska University public health researcher, Dr. James Lawler, that was recently presented to hospital executives: 480,000 American deaths over the course of the illness known as Covid-19. (Katz, Sanger-Katz and Quealy, 3/16)

When President Donald Trump asserted last month that the novel coronavirus may dissipate “as the heat comes in” -- that is, in warmer weather -- infectious disease experts responded with skepticism. The virus is less than three months old and, it’s not clear if it will dissipate as the seasons change from winter to spring like some other respiratory viruses tend to. But researchers now suggest that humidity, more than heat, may prove effective at choking off the person-to-person transmissions that make the disease’s spread so dangerous. (Bruggeman, 3/16)

Scientists and government officials fighting the coronavirus epidemic say they have a problem: Carefree youths. As authorities moved to restrict social gatherings last week, bars and restaurants from New York to Berlin filled up with revelers, illegal “lockdown parties” popped up in France and Belgium, and campuses in the U.S. lit up for end-of-the-world dorm parties. So far, most young Covid-19 patients have experienced mild or no symptoms from the virus, while more severe cases are concentrated among those aged 50 and over. Data released last week by the National Health Institute in Italy, currently the world’s worst-hit country, shows mortality rates starting at 0% for patients aged 0 to 29 and edging up to peak at 19% for those over 90. (Pancevski, Meichtry and Fontdegloria, 3/17)

Scientists tracking the spread of the coronavirus reported on Monday that, for every confirmed case, there are most likely another five to 10 people in the community with undetected infections. These often-milder cases are, on average, about half as infectious as confirmed ones, but are responsible for nearly 80 percent of new cases, according to the report, which was based on data from China. (Carey, 3/16)

Many readers have submitted questions to the Globe regarding possible risks to pregnant women amid the coronavirus pandemic. Here’s some guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. According to an advisory posted to the CDC website, researchers currently don’t know whether pregnant women are at a greater risk of contracting the virus or related serious illness. (Andersen, 3/16)

Kaiser Health News: Ships, Planes, Trains, Scooters All Need A Virus Wipe. But What Does A ‘Deep Clean’ Mean?

The Diamond Princess cruise ship. A Georgetown church in Washington, D.C. A Latin American restaurant in Raleigh, North Carolina. A hotel in Oklahoma City. Two Broadway theaters in New York City.All announced that they’ve undergone a “deep clean” in recent weeks after discovering that a person infected with the novel coronavirus had been there. They are just the tip of a pile of businesses and consumer gathering spots that say they are stepping up cleaning protocols. (Knight and Heredia Rodriguez, 3/17)

Clues on how to fight the coronavirus lie within history’s past epidemics, including devastating outbreaks of polio.A vaccine was developed in 1955, the same year thousands were infected by the polio virus — including Here & Now host Robin Young and her siblings. In some states, 50 new cases popped up each day. (Young, 3/16)

A growing number of governors ordered a partial shut down of their state economies Monday to limit the spread of the coronavirus, mandating that certain retailers cutoff sales, restaurants kick out diners and fitness centers close their doors. In other states, governors deferred those decisions to mayors and other local officials who went even further. Six counties in the San Francisco Bay area ordered nearly 7 million residents to stay inside, allowing them to venture out only for necessities during a three-week period starting Tuesday. (Lieb, 3/16)

No one wants to be seen as prioritizing profit or, say, youth soccer over saving lives. But in recent days, a group of contrarian political leaders, ethicists and ordinary Americans have bridled at what they saw as a tendency to dismiss the complex trade-offs that the measures collectively known as “social distancing” entail. Besides the financial ramifications of such policies, their concerns touch on how society’s most marginalized groups may fare and on the effect of government-enforced curfews on democratic ideals. Their questions about the current approach are distinct from those raised by some conservative activists who have suggested the virus is a politically inspired hoax, or no worse than the flu. (Harmon, 3/16)

Closing in on a week after the coronavirus had descended on his small, rural community, James D. Smith sat behind a microphone in the WCYN studio on Main Street for his regular morning show, “Coffee Break Extra.” On his head, he wore a dark blue cap that said “mayor,” and in his eyes, the stress of the past several days. “Everyone knows what’s going on,” the lifelong Cynthiana resident in his sixth year as mayor told listeners. “We’re keeping our hope up. We’re keeping our faith up. We’re keeping our chin up.” (Rojas, 3/17)

The coronavirus pandemic is bringing most of the world’s sports to a standstill. But one event that is still scheduled is the Tokyo Olympics, which are set to begin in late July. On Tuesday Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, will hold a conference call with the leaders of each national Olympic committee to discuss the prospects for the Tokyo Games. He will also be speaking with leaders of the international sports federations. (Futterman and Ward, 3/17)

State capitols are emptying quickly as legislators put their sessions on hold and head home amid the fast-spreading coronavirus pandemic.Already, 11 legislatures have postponed their sessions, as health officials urge social distancing measures and discourage mass gatherings. Lawmakers in Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont have suspended or postponed their work, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. (Brown, 3/16)

There was a new sign affixed to Starbucks doors across the United States on Monday. “We have temporarily closed our seating area, but we remain open to serve you,” it said. “Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience.” The floor was unusually empty at one location in Upper Manhattan, with tables and chairs stacked near the windows. (Fortin, 3/16)

Washington, D.C., is shutting down all movie theaters and gyms, and ordering restaurants and bars to serve only takeout, as the nation's capital continues to ramp up its social distancing measures to stem the spread of the coronavirus. Mayor Muriel Bowser said Monday that she is also placing local National Guard units on standby, but not actively deploying them yet. She said she envisions the National Guard playing a role in organizing mass virus testing sites in the future. (Khalil, 3/16)

Maryland and the District have suspended on-site bar and restaurant service as of Monday evening and shut down movie theaters and gyms, as the region’s tally of reported novel coronavirus cases climbed past 100 and Virginia reported its second fatality. Restaurants may still offer food for carryout and delivery, but customers may not dine in. Officials said the shutdown will be fully enforced. (Olivo, Wiggins and Nirappil, 3/16)

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser ordered all restaurants, bars, and clubs in the nation's capital to effectively close by 10 p.m. ET Monday in an effort to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. Take-out and delivery is still allowed. The suspension -- which also orders health clubs, spas, massage parlors and theaters to close by Tuesday -- is set to last until April 1. (LeBlanc, 3/16)

Kaiser Health News: Many Schools Have Closed ― But Not All. What Parents Need To Know About That Tough Call.

In the face of a global pandemic, thousands of K-12 school districts from Los Angeles to New York City and many cities in between announced closures in recent days. Every state is experiencing at least some school closures; in nearly three dozen states so far, governors have closed all public schools statewide. On Monday, President Donald Trump signaled even more closures may happen soon, saying children should “engage in schooling from home whenever possible.” (Barry-Jester, 3/17)

Even as we take significant steps to distance ourselves from one another to “flatten the curve” of the coronavirus pandemic, one of the hardest decisions has been whether to close schools. There are strong arguments on both sides. (Carroll, 3/17)

For hundreds of thousands of students in the Washington region, Monday was the debut of a school experience like no other — the beginning of a shutdown that left many without classrooms or teachers, without desks or classmates or lunchrooms or recess. The first day of the school-less reality brought on by the global coronavirus outbreak meant online learning for some in the region, paper packets for others. It left some children idle. Others headed to campus for free school-provided meals. (St. George, Natanson and Stein, 3/16)

Though more than 1 million Massachusetts students will stay home from school for the next three weeks to control the spread of the coronavirus, the state has left open child-care centers, which serve the youngest children who require the most hands-on care and who are notorious for spreading germs. That has some day-care teachers concerned about their continued vulnerability. More than 18,000 have signed an online petition urging the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care to mandate the closure of child-care centers, which remain open at the discretion of the providers. (Ebbert and Johnston, 3/16)

Officials are reportedly set to announce Tuesday that the historic Kentucky Derby would be postponed until the fall amid the coronavirus outbreak. The annual race, which draws thousands of spectators and millions more viewers across the country on TV, will be delayed until September, Fox affiliate WDRB reported Monday. (Bowden, 3/16)

Alarmed by the community spread of the new coronavirus that has made Louisiana a hotspot nationally for the pandemic, government officials put in place an array of new restrictions on Monday that promise to disrupt life for virtually every citizen, ordering bars, gyms and casinos to close and banning gatherings of 50 or more people. (Karlin and Adelson, 3/16)

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday took the extraordinary step of postponing oral arguments for more than a dozen cases, including three that involve subpoenas for President Trump's financial records, citing "public health precautions" due to the COVID-19 pandemic. "The Court will examine the options for rescheduling those cases in due course in light of the developing circumstances," spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said in a statement. (Dwyer, 3/16)

The SAT is canceled -- for now. The College Board, the organization behind the college placement exam, announced on Monday that it would no longer administer the test in May amid coronavirus concerns. March makeup exams are being canceled as well, and a new date has not yet been set for additional SAT testing opportunities. (Kim, 3/16)

The National Park Service on Monday temporarily suspended operations at the Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island in response to the coronavirus outbreak. A date to reopen has not yet been determined, according to NPS officials. (Kim, 3/16)

Kaiser Health News: In Face Of Coronavirus, Many Hospitals Cancel On-Site Training For Nursing And Med Students

Yet another casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic may be the clinical training that’s so essential for America’s future nurses and doctors. As university campuses close and disease prevention efforts intensify, hospitals, nursing homes and other health care venues in California and nationally are canceling clinical rotations for student nurses — and, in some cases, medical students. The rationale is to protect both students and patients from getting sick and to reserve personal protective equipment, including masks, that may be in short supply. (Feder Ostrov, 3/17)

The staggering scope of the coronavirus pandemic came into increasingly stark focus Monday as the MBTA announced it would cut back on service, schools across the state prepared to close for weeks, and Boston ordered a halt to major business and city construction projects, bringing a longtime building boom to a standstill. (Greenberg, Logan and Finucane, 3/16)

With ridership drastically reduced due to the coronavirus outbreak, the MBTA will limit weekday service starting Tuesday, running a Saturday schedule on the subway and most bus lines. The T said the reduced levels of service are meant to balance the needs to limit crowding while adequately serving a much smaller ridership that still includes essential workers in the wake of the shutdown of schools, workplaces, and the broader regional economy. (Vaccaro and Rocheleau, 3/16)

In some places, public officials and private business owners moved with stunning speed. In others, paralyzing hesitancy, defiant bravado or blithe disregard dominated. But by Monday, it was clear everywhere that most of the American economy was grinding to an unparalleled halt and would remain that way for months. California took some of the most aggressive steps to curb the spread of the coronavirus, with San Francisco and its surrounding counties telling residents to “shelter in place” and not leave their homes unless necessary. Primary elections in Ohio, Georgia, Kentucky and Louisiana were postponed. (Cohen and Tankersley, 3/16)

To understand why the world economy is in grave peril because of the spread of coronavirus, it helps to grasp one idea that is at once blindingly obvious and sneakily profound. One person’s spending is another person’s income. That, in a single sentence, is what the $87 trillion global economy is. That relationship, between spending and income, consumption and production, is at the core of how a capitalist economy works. It is the basis of a perpetual motion machine. (Irwin, 3/17)

Jeffrey Albrecht, who owns three Holiday Inn hotels in southern Ohio, watched as $200,000 disappeared from his books in just three days as people began canceling bookings. The banker handling his mortgages on the properties called. He wanted to know: How much more money could Mr. Albrecht lose before he would miss a loan payment? Mr. Albrecht assured him he could last at least four months. (Hsu and Flitter, 3/16)

New York City business owners are scrambling to figure out how to keep the lights on, even as many are forced to close their doors in an attempt to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus. The governors of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut said that movie theaters, gyms and casinos would close beginning 8 p.m. Monday, while restaurants and bars would be restricted to takeout and delivery. (King, 3/16)

It’s becoming harder by the hour to find the new normal. We need each other in a crisis like this, but we rightly fear congestion. France and Spain have ordered all cafes and restaurants shut down. In New York, it’s the same, with museums and Broadway theaters on hiatus. Mosques have closed in several countries, churches have canceled masses, and the pope prohibited the public from Holy Week celebrations. (Kimmelman, 3/17)

The early signals from the coronavirus crisis point to a scale of damage unseen in the modern U.S. economy: the potential for millions of jobs lost in a single month, a historic and sudden plunge in economic activity across the nation and a pace of sharp market swings not seen since the Great Depression. As the coronavirus outbreak ravages a paralyzed nation, Wall Street suffered another brutal bloodbath on Monday with the Dow Jones Industrial Average diving around 13 percent in its worst percentage loss since 1987’s “Black Monday” crash. (White, 3/16)

Goldman Sachs Group Inc told customers of its online bank, Marcus, and its Apple credit card on Monday that they can take an extra month to make payments, with no penalty or additional interest, if they are financially stretched due to the coronavirus. Goldman's announcement followed similar moves by lenders like Citigroup, which rolled out hardship assistance to customers last week, and automakers, which offered customers the chance to reschedule car loan payments. (3/16)

Amazon.com Inc said on Monday it would hire 100,000 warehouse and delivery workers in the United States to tackle a surge in online orders, as consumers shop heavily fearing the spread of the coronavirus outbreak. U.S. super market chains Albertsons, Kroger and Raley's are also looking to hire staff to man busy sections and fulfill online orders. (3/16)

Amazon plans to deploy the new workers to fuel its sprawling e-commerce machine and is raising pay for all employees in fulfillment centers, transportation, stores and deliveries in the U.S. and Canada by $2 an hour through April. In the U.K., it will go up £2 ($2.45) per hour and approximately €2 ($2.24) an hour in many EU countries, according to the company. Amazon now pays $15-per-hour as a starting wage to workers in its fulfillment centers around the U.S. The tech giant’s decision to go on a hiring spree and boost worker pay shows the dual challenge companies such as Amazon face as they seek to meet surging demand for food and key household items and also take care of employees at the front lines of the pandemic. (Mattioli, 3/17)

Dik LaPine has been a postman in Duluth, Minn., for 21 years and prides himself on rarely missing shifts. The 62-year-old carrier’s six-hour route has him stopping into many Duluth businesses and a smattering of homes every day. On Monday, as concerns continued to rise about the spread of the new coronavirus, Mr. LaPine clocked in at about 7 a.m. to prepare his deliveries to banks, real-estate agencies, nail salons, bars and restaurants. The local shopping mall is also on his list. (Stoll, 3/16)

Coronavirus has brought not just a public health threat, but now, a financial one, too, as hundreds of thousands of laid-off Michiganders like Sharon Kubitz — and millions more nationwide — want to know how they will make ends meet. "With the coronavirus, they closed the restaurant for dining in and are just doing takeout," said Kubitz, 54, of Midland. She had been a server at China Palace for more than eight years. "I happened to find out all the restaurants were closing and texted our boss and he said, 'Don't come in.' " (Witsil, 3/16)

Forget predictions that the U.S. economy will enter a recession this year due to the coronavirus pandemic — the UCLA Anderson Forecast says it has happened already. On Monday, the school revised a forecast it issued just last week that stopped short of predicting a recession. The revised version says the economy has already stopped growing and will remain in recession through the end of September. This is the first time in the 68-year history of the forecast that it has been updated before its planned quarterly update. (Darmiento, 3/16)

As restaurants, shops, airlines and factories shut down around the world, from New York to Paris and Madrid, economists are warning that a global recession is no longer a looming threat. It's here. Dire economic data released by China on Monday showed that the country was pummeled by the coronavirus outbreak in January and February. The world's second biggest economy looks unlikely to recover any time soon. (Horowitz, 3/16)

The Federal Reserve has nearly unloaded its available arsenal of weapons to avert a recession as the coronavirus pandemic unleashes chaos on the global economy. The Fed slashed its baseline interest rate range to 0 to 0.25 percent Sunday and announced it would purchase at least $700 billion in bonds to stabilize financial markets and keep credit flowing to households and businesses. (Lane, 3/16)

U.S. stock futures rose on Tuesday, suggesting markets could regain some ground after a punishing selloff on Monday, while international equities endured another turbulent session. Futures tied to the S&P 500 were up 3.8% early Tuesday. Futures prices can be volatile, and changes aren’t necessarily matched by stock moves after the opening bell. On Monday, the three major U.S. stock indexes all plunged 12% to 13%, reflecting fear among investors that the emergency measures taken by the Federal Reserve may not be enough to ward off a coronavirus-induced recession. (Yoon, 3/17)

Fears that policymakers have not done enough to avert a protracted economic downturn deepened a sense of national crisis Monday and sent stocks to their worst single-day losses since the Black Monday crash of 1987. The sell-off accelerated, with the Dow Jones industrial average plunging nearly 3,000 points, after President Trump warned that disruption from the coronavirus pandemic could last through August and issued new public health guidance, saying Americans should limit gatherings to no more than 10 people. (Lynch, 3/16)

The plunge came even after governments worldwide expanded calls for containment measures, including mass school closures, and central banks intervened in the markets. The Federal Reserve on Sunday made a surprise announcement that it would slash interest rates to zero and buy hundreds of billions of dollars in bonds, but it wasn't enough to prevent stock markets from cratering. (Mejdrich, 3/16)

Traders like Michael Pomada help explain why the stock market is going through its most turbulent period in recent memory. Mr. Pomada was in good spirits as he drove his convertible to his office in Los Angeles’s Century City complex before sunrise on March 9. Investment funds managed by his $4.5 billion firm, Crabel Capital Management, were up about 5% for the year. He wasn’t especially concerned about financial markets or the economy, even though oil prices were tumbling that morning. (Banerji and Zuckerman, 3/16)

The early signals from the coronavirus crisis point to a scale of damage unseen in the modern U.S. economy: the potential for millions of jobs lost in a single month, a historic and sudden plunge in economic activity across the nation and a pace of sharp market swings not seen since the Great Depression. As the coronavirus outbreak ravages a paralyzed nation, Wall Street suffered another brutal bloodbath on Monday with the Dow Jones Industrial Average diving around 13 percent in its worst percentage loss since 1987’s “Black Monday” crash. (White, 3/16)

Keros Therapeutics is filing for an IPO, according to plans made public Monday — a bold move amid the stock market’s historic nose dive. But it may need to be bold: Until a few days ago, the Lexington, Mass.-based company was very nearly out of money. (Sheridan, 3/17)

The most elemental act of American democracy — voting — will be tested Tuesday as four states set to hold presidential primaries confront the impact of a global pandemic that has turned everyday life upside-down. Leaders sent conflicting signals about how to approach the next steps amid the coronavirus outbreak. As health officials warned against gatherings of greater than 10 people, President Donald Trump said elections should proceed. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine went to court to try to push his state's primary into June while elections officials in Arizona, Illinois and Florida said they were moving forward with plans to vote. (Weissert, 3/16)

But it remains unclear whether life will return to normal in time for primaries later in the spring, national nominating conventions this summer, and even the November election for president, Congress, and other state and local races. The uncertainty highlights the vexed relationship between partisan politics and public health, as Biden seeks to lock up the nomination and as Trump strives to hold on to power while responding to an escalating global emergency. (Stanley-Becker and Gardner, 3/16)

Turnout is a question ahead of every election. It would be an understatement to say it is a more challenging question than usual ahead of Tuesday’s primaries, as voters head to the polls in Florida, Illinois and Arizona amid the coronavirus pandemic. Although it’s hard to forecast the impact of coronavirus on turnout, there are a few hard facts that, on balance, suggest it might have less of an effect than one might expect in Florida and Arizona. But Illinois might be somewhat more vulnerable to a decline in turnout. (Cohn, 3/17)

Ohio’s governor on Monday night said he and top state health officials would ignore a court ruling and postpone Ohio’s presidential primary by declaring a public health emergency because of the coronavirus outbreak. The governor, Mike DeWine, said that the state’s health director, Dr. Amy Acton, had issued the order based on concerns that the coronavirus outbreak placed both voters and poll workers in potential danger. (Corasaniti and Saul, 3/16)

“During this time when we face an unprecedented public health crisis, to conduct an election tomorrow would force poll workers and voters to place themselves at an unacceptable health risk of contracting coronavirus,” Gov. Mike DeWine (R) said in a tweet. He also promised to push for a remedy through the courts “to extend voting options so that every voter who wants to vote will be granted that opportunity. ”The announcement was sure to create more uncertainty as voters, poll workers and county election officials received yet another reversal regarding the fate of Tuesday’s presidential primary, with voting set to begin at 6:30 a.m. (Gardner, Viebeck and Stanley-Becker, 3/16)

In dozens of interviews at polling places across the state this weekend, where early voting was underway, residents said voting felt like both an act of faith and defiance, even as other states were considering whether to move forward. By Monday, four states — Louisiana, Georgia, Ohio and Kentucky — had postponed or moved to postpone their primary elections, with more likely to follow. But Arizona was still set to hold its election on Tuesday as planned. State and local officials said they would make disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizer available at polling places, and they encouraged those who could to vote by mail. (Medina, 3/16)

Voters in Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio are living in a vastly different world than voters who headed to the polls a week ago were living in. A day after six contests were held on March 10, the World Health Organization publicly characterized the novel coronavirus outbreak as a pandemic. Two days after that, on Friday, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency to respond to the crisis. (Scanlan, 3/17)

Three other states set to hold primaries Tuesday—Arizona, Florida and Illinois—appeared to be going forward as planned, but each state moved some polling places away from nursing homes and other vulnerable sites. On Monday, the Florida Democratic Party called on Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to release an updated statewide list of polling sites and said party workers had begun calling and texting more than 126,700 voters who, by their estimate, live in an affected precinct and haven’t yet voted. (Siddiqui, 3/16)

Does voting spread disease? Common sense, and a basic understanding of how respiratory viruses spread, make it a reasonable question. We’ve conducted research on the subject — looking at the past five federal elections (presidential and midterm) — and concluded that past elections have not led to national surges of viral disease. (Jena, Woo and Worsham, 3/17)

Two Senate Democrats called Monday for the U.S. to expand by-mail voting and early voting in order to ensure that voter participation is not reduced by the ongoing coronavirus outbreak. In a Washington Post op-ed, Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) argued that Congress should pass emergency measures to expand nontraditional voting methods for all Americans as states across the country have wrestled with the prospects of delaying their primary elections due to the outbreak. (Bowden, 3/16)

Across California, as the coronavirus marches through communities, life as everyone understands it in the Golden State is changing dramatically, hour by hour, minute by minute. The state has begun enacting extreme measures to halt the coronavirus outbreak. On Monday, seven counties around Silicon Valley, one of the hardest-hit areas in the nation, announced a shelter-at-home order that begins Tuesday, which Mayor Sam Liccardo of San Jose said was the strongest directive yet in the United States. Residents, including those living in San Francisco, were told not to go out for three weeks except to meet “essential needs.” (Arango, Fuller, Eligon and Dougherty, 3/16)

Six Bay Area counties announced “shelter in place” orders for all residents on Monday — the strictest measure of its kind yet in the continental United States — directing everyone to stay inside their homes and away from others as much as possible for the next three weeks in a desperate move to curb the rapid spread of coronavirus across the region. The directive was set to begin at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday and involves San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Marin, Contra Costa and Alameda counties — a combined population of more than 6.7 million. (Allday, 3/16)

Other countries have been able to slow the virus infection rate "by implementing extreme measures that make people uncomfortable for the time being, but are necessary to get us to a better place," San Francisco Mayor London Breed told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. The city has put a number of initiatives in place to help those out of work or otherwise hurt by the lockdown, Breed said, including grants for small businesses and a philanthropic fund that the private sector has contributed millions of dollars to help employees. (Mossburg and Waldrop, 3/17)

Officials say slowing the spread of the virus is urgent to prevent hospitals from getting overwhelmed. Older adults and those with underlying medical conditions are most at risk for critical illness, with their bodies unable to fight off a viral infection of the lungs that can result in a failure to breathe on their own, septic shock and multiple organ failure. (Lin, 3/16)

Vital businesses like grocery stores, banks and pharmacies will remain open, San Francisco Mayor London Breed said, and indispensable government services will continue. While bars were slated to close at midnight, restaurants will still fill takeout orders. “These measures will be disruptive to day-to-day life but there is no need to panic,” Breed said at a Monday press conference. “Your garbage will be picked up, police officers will be out there on the front line.” (Colliver and White, 3/16)

On Monday, Laurie Berliner, who sells hand-made hats at a shop called Madge & Me in San Anselmo, was getting ready to close for three weeks. She’ll still make hats during the temporary closure, but won’t sell to customers or operate her store. In San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, Christin Evans, co-owner of the Alembic bar, shuttered the pub and her other shop, the Booksmith, for three weeks, though the bookstore’s website will remain open for business. (Narayan and Li, 3/16)

Gov. Gavin Newsom is urging all Californians over 65 to stay at home as much as possible, and that advice was hardened Monday with a shelter-in-place order in six Bay Area counties until April 7 telling everyone to stay inside except for essential outings. Those include travel for needs such as groceries, pharmacy items and health care.Here are some tips, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, state Department of Public Health and other sources, on what older adults need to know during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Fagan, 3/16)

Public transit in the Bay Area will remain operational, but only for essential travel, and riders are ordered to keep six feet apart.Non-essential travel “on foot, bicycle, scooter, automobile or public transit” is prohibited. (Ravani, 3/16)

Six Bay Area counties are expected to demand residents shelter in place for the next three weeks as health officials scramble to keep coronavirus from spreading across the region.Here’s a quick look at what you need to know about the shelter-in-place order. (Fracassa, 3/16)

San Francisco will pay for five additional sick days for private-sector workers harmed by the new coronavirus as it expands relief efforts. Mayor London Breed is setting aside $10 million to help those financially strapped by the growing pandemic. (Cassidy and Li, 3/16)

Citing the need to “align” the efforts of local and state officials to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus, Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Monday that all California restaurants should close their doors to dine-in customers and that gyms, health clubs and movie theaters should also shutter their operations. The announcement, made during a brief presentation on Facebook Live, represented an expansion of the state’s public health efforts and a reversal from just 24 hours earlier as to whether restaurants should curtail their operations. (Myers, 3/16)

Coronavirus cases in California continue to rise as officials turn to extraordinary steps to slow the spread. L.A. County officials announced the closure of all bars, fitness centers and movie theaters and directed restaurants to move to takeout only. The directive applies to all 88 cities and unincorporated regions of the county, including Los Angeles, which issued a similar directive Sunday. (Willon, Wigglesworth, Luna, Newberry and Shalby, 3/16)

California lawmakers approved a plan Monday to spend as much as $1 billion on the state’s emergency medical response as it readies hospitals to combat an expected onslaught of patients due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. The proposals, drafted quickly in response to the rapid rise in confirmed cases of the virus, will provide needed funding to open two additional hospitals in California amid concern that the state does not have the capacity to care for a surge in patients. The bill appropriates $500 million for emergency response from the state’s general fund with an additional $500 million available if needed. (Gutierrez and Myers, 3/16)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recommendation that hospitals and nursing homes severely restrict visitors threw hundreds of thousands of California families into disarray and heartache Sunday. Newsom said his directive is an advisory, not an order, but he’s confident California hospitals, assisted-living facilities and others will follow the guidance to limit visitations in all cases except for “end-of-life” scenarios. (Sabalow and Kasler, 3/15)

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday ordered state health and social service agencies to redirect services toward senior citizens and people with chronic health conditions — two populations that he’s told to stay home as the coronavirus spreads. The new executive order aims to put more staff in residential care and outpatient facilities, and to add programs that would serve seniors cloistering themselves at home. (Swan, 3/16)

The Los Angeles Police Department will shift half the detectives working in its community stations to daily patrol in order to ensure public peace. Mayor Eric Garcetti made the announcement Monday evening, saying that the city’s detectives will start working on the streets to “help supplement our patrol officers.” (Winton and Smith, 3/16)

In California, 51% of school districts are shut down — including all 900 campuses in the nation's second largest school district, Los Angeles Unified Schools. Superintendent Austin Beutner says schools will be closed for at least two weeks with no definitive date to reopen. ...Of the nearly 700,000 LAUSD students, 80% rely on free or reduced lunches and at least 18,000 are homeless. (Mosley, 3/16)

Kaiser Permanente has pledged $1 million toward efforts to prevent and treat COVID-19 cases among the nation's homeless population. The Oakland, Calif.-based health system on Monday partnered with the advocacy group National Health Care for the Homeless Council to fund at least four housing activist groups in California, Seattle and Portland, Ore. Those areas account for nearly half of all coronavirus cases in the U.S. and have some of the largest homeless populations in the country. (Johnson, 3/16)

To be able to self-quarantine is a privilege, kind of like stocking up on groceries and singing a nursery rhyme while washing your hands. When you live on the streets, potable water is too precious to use on your hands. Michael Stein, a professor of health law, policy and management at Boston University, says we should have known something like this was coming. (Taylor Jr., 3/16)

Northern California may still be grappling with the novel coronavirus outbreak when it begins to face the more familiar threat of dangerous wildfires, and emergency officials are already contemplating that possibility. It’s not clear exactly how long the new virus will cause disruptions such as school closures, event cancellations and quarantines — or whether its spread will be abated by warmer weather, like the common cold and flu. (Morris, 3/16)

New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have agreed to close bars, restaurants and other businesses and impose curfews that begin at 8 p.m. daily, a sweeping and so-far unprecedented regional effort to enforce social distancing as new coronavirus cases jump across the nation. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont said Monday morning that all gyms, movie theaters and casinos will also close indefinitely starting at 8 p.m. Monday. Bars and restaurants will only be available for takeout services. Gatherings of more than 50 people are banned, a directive that follows guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued Sunday evening. (Gronewold and Hutchins, 3/16)

All three states are discouraging travel on a nightly basis from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m., the governors, all Democrats, said in a joint conference call Monday. The governors are also encouraging all businesses to adhere to the recommended curfew, except for essential services like grocery stores, pharmacies and gas stations. In addition to bars, gyms and theaters will close across the tri-state region beginning Tuesday. Restaurants will only be allowed to offer take out or drive-through service. (De Avila and Chapman, 3/16)

New York state lawmakers said they are finalizing legislation that would expand paid sick leave for workers amid the new coronavirus outbreak even as they scuttled plans for a Monday session. The Capitol is closed to visitors and lobbyists after two Democratic members of the state Assembly—Charles Barron and Helene Weinstein—tested positive for the virus, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie announced Saturday. (Vielkind, 3/16)

For a big-city mayor who relies on detailed written memos reviewed by multiple staffers before committing to any major decision, this was the most difficult one yet. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio agonized over whether to shutter the public school system he runs amid an outbreak of the coronavirus, which has now claimed the lives of at least seven city residents. (Goldenberg, 3/16)

For most of last week, as Mayor Bill de Blasio continued to urge New Yorkers to mostly go about their daily lives — sending their children to school, frequenting the city’s businesses — some of his top aides were furiously trying to change the mayor’s approach to the coronavirus outbreak. There had been arguments and shouting matches between the mayor and some of his advisers; some top health officials had even threatened to resign if he refused to accept the need to close schools and businesses, according to several people familiar with the internal discussions. (Mays and Goldstein, 3/16)

New York restaurant and bar owners could be arrested if they refuse to abide by Mayor Bill de Blasio's executive order to restrict them to delivery and take-out only. The measures come as the City That Never Sleeps takes drastic steps to stop the spread of coronavirus. (Levenson, Ly and Vera, 3/17)

"Saturday Night Live" will not be live from New York anytime soon. The NBC variety series, which was scheduled to return from hiatus on March 28, will not resume production until further notice, the network said on Monday. It's unclear if the show will return since there were only six episodes left this season, the show's 45th on air. (Pallotta, 3/16)

With COVID-19 now in almost every state, states are beginning to coordinate with one another, if not in policies, at least in messaging.The governors of New Jersey, New York and Connecticut Monday announced a series of identical policies regarding closures. All three are limiting recreational and social gatherings with more than 50 people. They are closing restaurants and bars except for takeout service. And they are shutting down movie theaters, gyms and casinos. All those restrictions take effect at 8 p.m. (Ollove, 3/16)

With closures tied to the coronavirus outbreak impacting everything from restaurants and schools to municipal offices, Gov. Charlie Baker on Monday filed a suite of legislation intended to offer a lifeline to workers forced to stay home and to cities and towns trying to keep local government operational. Baker last week declared a state of emergency in response to the spread of coronavirus throughout Massachusetts, but his emergency powers only extend so far. (Murphy, 3/16)

Biogen, the Cambridge-based biotech firm that hosted a late February conference in Boston linked to dozens of coronavirus cases, is donating $10 million to combat the pandemic. “This donation will be used to help expand testing options, ease the strain on medical systems, provide training for front line health workers and support access to necessities like food,” the company said in a news release. (McDonald, 3/16)

A health care provider at Massachusetts General Hospital and another at Massachusetts Eye and Ear have tested positive for coronavirus, bringing to four the number of Boston hospital workers who see patients known to be infected. Neither hospital would identify the individuals or their specific jobs, but officials said the providers are both in isolation at home and doing well. The Globe reported this past weekend that two doctors at Brigham and Women’s Hospital have also contracted the virus and are in home quarantine. (Kowalczyk and McCluskey, 3/16)

In series of tweets Sunday night, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said that closing day care centers to stop the spread of the coronavirus is inevitable."I've tried to signal that daycares will eventually be closed," DeWine wrote. "But, our health care systems need to be staffed. You'll start to see health care facilities creating their own day cares." Cincinnati area YMCAs have announced plans to operate day camps for the children of health care workers. (Knight, 3/16)

Cincinnati Heath Commissioner Melba Moore said Monday morning six people related to city health centers are being tested for the disease caused by the new coronavirus. She gave no specific details, such as whether the six are employees or patients, nor which clinics where the contacts happened. Health care workers are at greater risk of exposure due to the nature of their work. (Coolidge, 3/16)

Amid all the closings and uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus in the United States, it’s unfortunate but not unexpected that false information is being sent out on social media. On Monday, Sen. Marco Rubio apparently had had enough, tweeting “COMPLETELY FALSE” pertaining to rumors the U.S. is now under martial law. Well, he sort of tweeted that. Rubio misspelled “martial,” which started “Marshall Law” and photos of Marshall Mathers, aka Eminem, trending. (Clanton, 3/16)

A leader of emergency medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center has cautioned his team there aren’t enough tests for the novel coronavirus to cover health providers, “and I do not have a high degree of confidence that this will change soon.” Dr. Scott Reeves, senior clinical director of emergency medicine, also said the hospital’s Liberty campus “remains contracted" in its surgical schedule. The Liberty campus houses a proton therapy machine, the only one in the Cincinnati region that can provide precise radiation treatment of brain tumors and other cancers. (Saker, 3/16)

A metro Atlanta assisted living facility has three residents and an employee who have tested positive for the coronavirus — a sign of the acute risks that senior care facilities face as the virus spreads across Georgia. The Retreat at Canton confirmed that three residents and an employee have “tested presumptively positive” for COVID-19, according to a release by the facility that has 90 beds. (Schrade, 3/16)

Philadelphia workers covered under the city’s sick leave law can now use their sick time during a public health emergency, such as the coronavirus pandemic, the Mayor’s Office of Labor announced Monday. That means that workers can use their sick time if they have to stay home due to quarantine, business closures, or to care for a child because of a school closure. (Feliciano Reyes, 3/16)

Bottles of Tito’s Vodka and Skinnygirl Margaritas were sold out at the liquor store in Drexel Hill, and over in Conshohocken there wasn’t a single jug of $17.99 Carlo Rossi cabernet sauvignon left on the shelves. But the one thing all liquor stores in the Pennsylvania suburbs were running low on Monday — the day before the state shut them down indefinitely due to the coronavirus — was boxed wine. (Farr, 3/16)

Michigan now has 54 reported cases of novel coronavirus in the state, the state’s Department of Health and Human Services announced Monday. A woman from Macomb County with a history of domestic travel was added to the list of positive cases of COVID-19 in Michigan, according to a release Monday evening from the state's Emergency Operations Center. (Moran, 3/16)

Medical marijuana continues to be sold at state-approved dispensaries in Pennsylvania. The dispensaries are akin to pharmacies and therefore considered “essential” businesses. At least one dispensary owner is working to assure that card-carrying patients can still get their medicines if they get sick with the coronavirus. (Wood, 3/16)

Pittsburgh-based Highmark Health, owner of a Blue Cross and Blue Shield plan and integrated health system, said 8,000 of its roughly 35,000 employees began working from home on Friday, as part of its efforts to protect staff from the COVID-19 pandemic. The not-for-profit healthcare company sent customer service, technology, call center and some logistical employees to work from home, and it purchased 3,000 laptops to allow another set of critical support staff to telecommute, Highmark Health CEO David Holmberg said Monday on a call with news media. (Livingston, 3/16)

As the coronavirus spreads exponentially in the region, some organizations serving the homeless and people in need have begun to shut their doors or limit their services. Those that remain open have introduced protective measures. The District’s Central Union Mission on Wednesday began checking the body temperature of staff members and every person who comes into the facility, which provides beds for 170 to 200 people a night, along with serving an additional 25 lunch or dinner. If they have a 100-degree fever plus one other symptom of the virus, or a 101-degree fever or higher, they are blocked from entering and directed to a medical facility. (Bahrampour, 3/15)

Seven days before Donald Trump took office, his aides faced a major test: the rapid, global spread of a dangerous virus in cities like London and Seoul, one serious enough that some countries were imposing travel bans. In a sober briefing, Trump’s incoming team learned that the disease was an emerging pandemic — a strain of novel influenza known as H9N2 — and that health systems were crashing in Asia, overwhelmed by the demand. “Health officials warn that this could become the worst influenza pandemic since 1918,” Trump’s aides were told. Soon, they heard cases were popping up in California and Texas. The briefing was intended to hammer home a new, terrifying reality facing the Trump administration, and the incoming president’s responsibility to protect Americans amid a crisis. (Toosi, Lippman and Diamond, 3/16)

Senior aides battling one another for turf, and advisers protecting their own standing. A president who is racked by indecision and quick to blame others and who views events through the lens of how the news media covers them. A pervasive distrust of career government professionals, and disregard for their recommendations. And a powerful son-in-law whom aides fear crossing, but who is among the few people the president trusts. The culture that President Trump has fostered and abided by for more than three years in the White House has shaped his administration’s response to a deadly pandemic that is upending his presidency and the rest of the country, with dramatic changes to how Americans live their daily lives. (Haberman and Weiland, 3/16)

The Department of Veterans Affairs serves as a backup health system in times of crisis, but its mission statement for this crucial role was deleted from the agency’s website Friday as many in the country grew concerned that the coronavirus could overload civilian hospitals. VA’s three missions are to serve veterans through care, research and training in its behemoth health system. But in 1982, Congress mandated what has become known as VA’s “fourth mission”: to absorb non-veteran civilian patients in the event that hospitals overflow with patients in an emergency, such as a pandemic like the coronavirus. (Horton, 3/16)

A Cuban asylum seeker with breast cancer who has been detained since November is among dozens of people seeking to be released by U.S. immigration authorities amid fears that the coronavirus could spread quickly in densely populated detention facilities. In her four months in immigration detention, the 39-year-old woman has contracted flu and numerous infections and was recently transferred to a detention facility in rural Louisiana, her attorney wrote in a request to federal immigration authorities for what is known as humanitarian parole. (Cooke and Rosenberg, 4/16)

The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Monday, arguing nine detainees held at a Washington state detention center should be released due to their vulnerability to the new coronavirus. The suit is part of a broader push by advocates who are pushing for the release of more migrants in detention and a national closure of immigration courts, which they argue could become breeding grounds for the rapidly spreading virus. (Lazo and Caldwell, 3/16)

Immigration authorities in Boston are now conducting all scheduled immigration “check-ins” by phone, as the coronavirus pandemic continues its toll on the region, a spokesman said Monday. The move means that no one who is the subject of enforcement and removal operations is visiting the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Boston office. The change was made “in light of current public health recommendations," a spokesman said. (McDonald, 3/16)

The Department of Health and Human Services experienced suspicious cyberactivity Sunday night related to its coronavirus response, administration sources confirmed to ABC News Monday. The suspicious activity HHS was not a hack but it may have been a distributed denial of service -- or DDOS -- attack, according to multiple sources. (Santucci, Faulders, Margolin, Barr and Levine, 3/16)

The incident appeared to be a particularly aggressive, if somewhat conventional, effort to scan the department’s networks for vulnerabilities, and perhaps to try to break into its email system. But while the effort set off alarms, given sensitivities around the work on the coronavirus, officials said they could not determine whether the action was the result of foreign actors or just hackers seizing on the moment to create chaos. (Sanger, Periroth and Rosenberg, 3/16)

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, speaking at an afternoon news conference in the White House, said the department had no penetration into its networks and that remote work wasn’t impacted. “The source of this enhanced activity remains under investigation,” Mr. Azar said. In a separate statement, HHS said that it witnessed on Sunday a “significant increase in activity” on its computer infrastructure but had been fully operational throughout an investigation into the issue, which included coordination with federal law enforcement. “Early on while preparing and responding to Covid-19, HHS put extra protections in place,” HHS spokeswoman Caitlin Oakley said, naming the disease caused by coronavirus. (Volz and Armour, 3/16)

Frenz said he's seen emails where a sender—pretending to be from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—urges a recipient to open a link that deploys malware. Another scam involves pointing people to an online map that purports to track COVID-19 cases, but actually steals usernames, passwords and credit card numbers stored in a user's browser. (Cohen, 3/16)

Hackers are zeroing in on government health agencies and hospitals, who are already struggling to keep pace with the coronavirus pandemic, as a way to make money and cause disruptions in the midst of a global crisis. These concerns were highlighted Monday when Bloomberg News reported that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), one of the agencies on the front lines of the outbreak, had been breached by hackers. A spokesperson for HHS subsequently told The Hill that the agency “became aware of a significant increase in activity on HHS cyber infrastructure and are fully operational as we actively investigate the matter." (Miller, 3/16)

Last week, a team of health science experts within Google parent Alphabet Inc. were exploring ways that software could help slow the spread of the coronavirus. Then came the White House news conference, the California governor’s endorsement, the scramble to build a disease screening website in three days — and on Monday, a crush of publicity around how the site failed to live up to expectations. (MacMillan, Kelly, Dwoskin and Dawsey, 3/16)

After her shifts in the emergency room, one doctor in Utah strips naked on her porch and runs straight to a shower, trying not to contaminate her home. In Oregon, an emergency physician talks of how he was recently bent over a drunk teenager, stapling a head wound, when he realized with a sudden chill that the patient had a fever and a cough. A doctor in Washington State woke up one night not long ago with nightmares of being surrounded by coughing patients. (Weise, 3/16)

Shortly before midnight on Thursday, the author Shea Serrano was at his home in San Antonio, lying comfortably on his sofa watching television. He could not shake a bad feeling about all the low-wage and hourly workers losing desperately needed tips and shifts because of the coronavirus outbreak. He felt he needed to do something. So he tweeted. (Kulish, 3/16)

EO Products, a Bay Area maker of bath and body products, has quadrupled production of its high-end hand sanitizer. It is running extra shifts, speeding up lines, hiring temporary workers and converting factory lines designed for other products to make hand sanitizer instead. It still can’t keep up. Customers call, sometimes in tears, begging for a few bottles they say they need to care for sick relatives. Retailers, facing an unprecedented surge in demand, are rationing as they try to restock bare shelves. A parts shortage with no workaround almost halted production on the factory floor. (Terlep, 3/16)

A Pennsylvania distillery owner who grew increasingly angry as he saw the skyrocketing price of hand sanitizer has decided to do something about it: He’s temporarily converting his operation into a production line for the suddenly hard-to-find, gooey, alcohol-based disinfectant. (3/16)

The text messages have largely followed a pattern: The author claims to have a connection to someone working at a clinic or government agency — an aunt, a neighbor, a friend’s cousin — who has revealed unannounced plans for an impending lockdown or quarantine. They’re passing along a warning, telling recipients of the urgent need to stockpile food, gas, medicine or other necessities. They often contain pleas that they be forwarded to others. (Zaveri, 3/16)

There is nothing like a crisis to bring out con artists seeking to take advantage of the vulnerable and the unwary.With the nation in the grip of the coronavirus pandemic, officials are warning of possible scams to bilk you out of money or steal your information. (Gambardello, 3/16)

Hotels have always been in the business of providing a good night’s rest, but a growing number of brands are adding tools to help guests chill out and get to sleep. And that was before the anxiety caused by the coronavirus. “Well-being is top of mind for everyone today, and we think that’s going to continue in the future,” said Mia Kyricos, senior vice president and global head of well-being at Hyatt Hotels. “If you think about the world we live in now, it’s 24/7. We increasingly have demands in work and life.” (White, 3/16)

As COVID-19 continues to spread—along with virus-induced closures, cancellations and social isolation—physical health is hardly the only concern. Mental health and addiction services providers have been given new guidance from the state on telehealth services at a time when demand is growing and could reach unprecedented levels. (Henderson, 3/16)

If there is a symbol of the current confusion and fear, the misinformation and anxiety, generated by the spread of the new coronavirus, it is the surgical face mask. When history looks back on the pandemic of 2020, those white or baby blue rectangles that hide the mouth and nose, turning everyone into a muzzled pelican, will be what we see. The masks began appearing almost immediately after the infection was identified, first in Asia, where masks were already common, and then in Europe. These days they are everywhere. (And nowhere — there is a serious face mask shortage). (Friedman, 3/17)

China now makes 200 million face masks a day — more than twenty times the amount it made at the start of February. The leap has been spurred by the outbreak of a new coronavirus. The masks include the lightweight ones that people like to wear in the hope of protection against coronavirus as well as the heavy-duty N95 masks used by health-care workers. But that's still not nearly enough to meet local demands as well as global orders. So a scramble is now underway in China. (Feng and Cheng, 3/16)

As supermarkets frantically work to restock shelves and calm panicked shoppers, some stores are taking steps to protect older and vulnerable customers who may be at the greatest risk from the novel coronavirus... The Australian grocery chain Woolworths is opening its stores an hour early for its elderly and disabled customers. It's the largest supermarket chain in Australia, with 995 stores. (Williams, 3/16)

Whether you're housebound for the next couple of weeks from a COVID-19 quarantine, or simply trying to survive a school or work shutdown, you'll likely be limiting or avoiding trips to the grocery store. So you may be wondering: What are the best foods to buy when you know you're going to be stuck at home -- and is it even possible to consume a nutritious diet? (Drayer, 3/17)

I grew up in Miami, where swarming the grocery store before a hurricane was a near-annual ritual. We packed our carts and waited in long lines, but there was certainty, at least in that very moment, that we were safe. The storm had not yet arrived. It was still on the TV screen, a disc spinning slowly in the ocean, behind a cone of uncertainty that meant we might not get hit at all. Now, we’re shopping in the middle of a hurricane we cannot see. (Zayas, 3/16)

Jittery shoppers across the country are clearing shelves of bathroom tissue as coronavirus keeps people home and threatens to force more Americans into quarantine. But toilet paper—unlike some other high-demand items such as hand sanitizer and face masks—remains plentiful, according to the two biggest manufacturers. Charmin maker Procter & Gamble Co. PG -4.88% and Cottonelle maker Kimberly-Clark Corp. KMB 0.39% say they have ramped up toilet-paper production and are able to make enough to meet demand. Kimberly-Clark has started posting pictures of warehouses full of toilet paper in some markets. The problem, the manufacturers say, is getting the product shipped to warehouses and retailers, and then onto store shelves, quickly enough to keep up with sales. (Terlep, 3/16)

Kaiser Health News: To Stop Coronavirus In Its Tracks, Here’s Your Guide To 5 Degrees Of Separation

As the number of coronavirus cases grows in the U.S., we’re hearing a lot about how social distancing, self-monitoring and even quarantine play into containment efforts. But what do those terms mean and when do they apply? We asked experts and found out there is some overlap and lots of confusion.Here’s a quick guide for what you need to know. (Appleby, 3/16)

Since 2014, more than 20 million people have received some form of healthcare coverage through the ACA, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank. The share of Americans who reported not going to a doctor due to cost concerns and skipping a prescription because they couldn’t afford it fell from 2010 to 2018. “Without the ACA we would not have the resources to take care of the patients we get to see every day now,” said Dr. Efrain Talamantes, medical director of the Institute for Health Equity at Los Angeles-based AltaMed. (Johnson, 3/14)

Congress created the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation under the Affordable Care Act to design, test and expand new payment and care delivery models that cut spending without lowering the quality of care or increased quality without raising expenditures. It was also supposed to hit on the third leg of the so-called Triple Aim by improving the overall health of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. (Brady, 3/14)

For all of its success in expanding health coverage to more than 20 million Americans, the Affordable Care Act has stumbled in a key area: affordability.Despite various provisions tucked into the law aimed at lowering costs, consumers continue to face high prices from both providers and insurers. And 10 years later, affordability is at the center of policy debates over healthcare. One of those efforts, the medical loss ratio rule, was touted by the Obama administration as a tool for lowering premiums, but in the long run, it may be having the opposite effect. (Livingston, 3/14)

After a contentious start a decade ago, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute was able to demonstrate how much perceptions have changed when Congress recently reauthorized its operations for another 10 years with bipartisan backing. The formation of the institute, often called PCORI, was one of the most controversial elements of the Affordable Care Act because of concerns flourishing among Republicans that it would lead to rationing of care. (Castellucci, 3/14)

The trade-off seemed simple in theory—hospitals would need less federal funding when the Affordable Care Act extended coverage to millions of Americans. But 10 years later, the forecast seems a lot more cloudy—obscured by a host of separate but intertwined Medicaid supplemental payments and financing mechanisms. Few are satisfied with the current patchwork of disproportionate-share hospital payments and intergovernmental transfers that stitch together a convoluted state and federal financing system that can divert funding from the hospitals most in need, industry overseers say. (Kacik, 3/14)

For the past year, Don Rucker has been in the middle of one of the biggest fights in American medicine — a pitched battle over a federal proposal to liberate patient health records currently housed in a byzantine network of outdated software systems. Last Monday, Rucker, the Trump administration’s national coordinator for health information technology, rendered a stirring ruling: He said patients should own their health data; they should be able to easily access it on their smartphones; and they should be able to share it with whomever they wish. In the wonky world of health technology policy, this is as close as one gets to a “drop the mic” moment. (Ross, 3/16)

More than 1.4 million people had data exposed in healthcare breaches reported to the federal government last month. That's from a collective 35 breaches that providers, health plans and their business associates in February reported to HHS' Office for Civil Rights, the agency that maintains the government's database of healthcare breaches. In terms of patients affected, that's down 32.3% from February 2019, when organizations reported 32 breaches affecting 2.1 million people. (Cohen, 3/13)

Alzheimer’s disease, the most common dementia among older adults, now affects about 5.8 million U.S. residents 65 and older — 10 percent of that age group, according to a new report from the Alzheimer’s Association. Age is considered the biggest risk factor for Alzheimer’s, with 3 percent of people 65 to 74, 17 percent of those 75 to 84 and 32 percent of people 85 and older — or nearly a third — having the disease. By 2050, the number of U.S. adults 65 and older with Alzheimer’s is expected to reach 13.8 million, with about half of them 85 or older. (Searing, 3/16)

When Lisa DeAngelico found out she had Stage 4 breast cancer two years ago at age 47, she says one of the hardest parts about her diagnosis was telling her mother. That’s because her mother had already lost her sister and niece to the disease. They had hoped DeAngelico would be spared from the family curse. So when DeAngelico’s doctor asked her whether she wanted to undergo DNA testing to better understand her family genetics, she agreed to offer a blood sample and meet with a genetic counselor. (Richards, 3/15)

In 1846, a dentist and a surgeon tried something dramatically new: the first public operation performed with anesthesia. Armed with a glass globe filled with ether, they anesthetized a patient and painlessly removed a tumor from his neck. “Gentlemen, this is no humbug,” John Collins Warren, the surgeon, supposedly exclaimed. (Blakemore, 3/14)

When children have pneumonia, giving them an antibiotic may be no more helpful than giving them none. Antibiotics are effective only for bacterial pneumonia, not viral, and it is often difficult to tell the difference. So doctors often prescribe an antibiotic for children just in case. A new study suggests that it might be better to skip it. (Bakalar, 3/16)

Many people who have struggled for years with excess weight know that the hardest and often the most frustrating job is not getting it off but keeping it off. Recent decades have seen countless popular diet schemes that promised to help people shed unwanted pounds, and as each of these diets failed in the long run, they spawned their successors. (Brody, 3/16)

San Francisco and five surrounding counties concurred in an unprecedented order to shelter in place for the next three weeks as of 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, a testament to the need for aggressive, informed and unified action to counter the rapidly escalating threat of the new coronavirus. Mayor London Breed and her counterparts around the region thereby showed the leadership this crisis calls for and spoke to the public trust, cooperation and calm required to ensure that the order is effective. (3/16)

I’m in Madrid, a ghost town battered by the coronavirus. Over the weekend, the Spanish government declared a state of emergency and imposed a strict quarantine on all citizens. We can’t leave the house unless it’s to buy food or medicine or take care of a sick relative. Schools and universities are closed. The same goes for stores, movie theaters, bars, restaurants. Police officers patrol the streets, ready to detain or fine people who violate the quarantine. Going outside to run or for a walk is prohibited. (Ignacio Escolar, 3/16)

In 1941, with war tearing through Europe and Asia and America on the precipice of joining the conflict, President Franklin D. Roosevelt compelled and inspired industries and individuals to rally for the greater good. Food was rationed without rioting, and car plants all but stopped producing automobiles in favor of tanks and fuselages. By 1944, American factory workers were building nearly 100,000 warplanes a year — or about 11 per hour. The United States is again faced with a crisis that calls for a national response, demanding a mobilization of resources that the free market or individual states cannot achieve on their own. (3/17)

I was at the supermarket Sunday and ran into a colleague who lives nearby. We were chatting — from a safe distance — about how the way we work has changed over the past week. Then a neighbor of mine, a longtime but not close acquaintance, walked up to say hello and extended his hand. Reflexively, I shook it. Oh boy. My colleague must have noticed the panic in my eyes. (Eugene Robinson, 3/16)

History will record that Donald Trump was asleep at the switch while a deadly virus derailed the United States. We can only hope the next president gets the nation back on the right track. At a campaign rally in South Carolina on Feb. 28 the president claimed Democrats had politicized the coronavirus outbreak and it was “their new hoax”. (Brad Bannon, 3/16)

When the World Health Organization (WHO) upgraded COVID-19 to pandemic status, we rose to the call, beginning to practice social distancing. But, this leaves the poor and those already at the highest risk for health and other disparities at greatest early risk. (Dr. Erin Paquette, 3/16)

When news of a mysterious viral pneumonia linked to a seafood market in Wuhan, China, reached the outside world in early January, one of my first reactions was to order a modest supply of masks. Just a few weeks later, there wasn’t a mask to be bought in stores, or online for a reasonable price — just widespread price gouging. Many health experts, no doubt motivated by the sensible and urgent aim of preserving the remaining masks for health care workers, started telling people that they didn’t need masks or that they wouldn’t know how to wear them. (Zynep Tufekci, 3/17)

American companies, organizations, universities, state and local governments, and individual citizens have heeded the advice of scientists and medical experts with a massive response to limit the spread of COVID-19. Universities have sent students home and put all classes online, Disneyland is closed, Broadway is dark, and the NBA and March Madness have canceled play. This overwhelming response was launched in the absence of a national response. (James Alwine and Felicia Goodrum Sterling, 3/16)

We know one thing for sure about the strange new world of the coronavirus into which the nation has now been plunged — it will get worse before it gets better. Health care experts are agreed on that point. So the issue becomes how best to manage the inevitable — the patients who will need care in this city that has proudly claimed to be a health care mecca, a place with the resources, the brain power and the capacity to work wonders. (3/14)

The coronavirus pandemic seemed so far away just weeks ago. No one likes to be isolated and sit at home and be bored. You want to be near friends as you work from home. The numbers you’re hearing about the virus seem too big to believe. You’re worried about your neighbors and the impact on local businesses and workers. You feel healthy, and how much worse can it be than the flu, after all? COVID-19 is spreading, and you won’t know you’re infected until you’ve already infected others. Right now, you have no immunity to prevent you from getting the disease. It’s especially lethal for older people or those with underlying conditions. This will come to communities in waves and will be a marathon, not a sprint, so pay attention to local events. And our hospitals won’t have sufficient resources — people, beds, ventilators or protective gear — if cases keep spreading as fast as they are in Italy. But there’s something important you can do: #StayHome. (3/16)

Keep your social distance, avoid crowded places — and above all, don’t shake hands! I understand the rationale for these directives from public health officials as we increase our efforts to fend off the spread of the coronavirus, but, oh, how I mourn what we are losing as a result. (Carol Kinsey Goman, 3/12)

Last week was as confusing as it was aggravating, as frustrating as it was life-threatening. The level of misinformation, suspect information and, perhaps, outright lies coming from the people we elected to competently guide us through such crises as the coronavirus pandemic was simply stunning. Among those recently testing positive was Miami’s young leader, Francis Suarez, the first American mayor to contract the coronavirus. He announced Friday that he tested positive for COVID-19. (3/13)

Life as we know it is grinding to a halt. It should be. As painful as the economic and household disruptions may be, Iowa needs a widespread pause on normal activities to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. It is critical to do what health experts call “flattening the curve,” which refers to spreading out infections and illnesses over a longer period, to increase the prospect that medical capacity will be sufficient. Medical experts understand this. Gov. Kim Reynolds' directions since late Sunday indicate recognition that these steps cannot be avoided. (3/15)

Few things undermine coronavirus containment efforts more than when public health officials provide confusing guidance or appear to shrug off citizens’ real concerns about possible exposure and symptoms. Government officials, doctors, hotline operators and anyone else interacting with the public must provide consistent responses when people with legitimate concerns and symptoms seek help. Experts say most people with symptoms such as a sneezing, fever, aches and cough are probably not infected with the novel coronavirus. Other flu viruses and sometimes even springtime allergies can produce similar symptoms. But the last thing authorities should do is dismiss people’s concerns because they’re overwhelmed or, worse, because they’re trying to hide the fact that test kits aren’t available to meet demand. (3/16)

The weirdest thing about the Democratic primary is how un-American it sounds. For all their differences, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden — the last men standing — both call for a robust expansion of government programs. Mr. Sanders wants “Medicare for all”; Mr. Biden wants a “public option” to compete against private insurance. Both call for a vast increase in Section 8 housing vouchers. Mr. Sanders wants to build 10 million affordable housing units. (Eduardo Porter, 3/14)

The passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 has been followed by a seemingly nonstop series of legal and legislative fights over its existence that are expected to carry on into the foreseeable future. And while we knew the party that had passed the ACA was invested in keeping uninsured rates low, the GOP and this administration express reservations about “forcing” people to have coverage and don’t seem to talk about what would happen to the uninsured. (Aurora Aguilar, 3/14)

In cities across the country, morning is peak time at almost any opioid treatment program. The line stretches from the front counter to the back door as patients wait to get their daily dose of methadone. It’s an absolutely essential gathering, but one that runs counter to containing the Covid-19 outbreak. Efforts by health systems and governments to contain the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes the disease, have revealed gaping cracks in our nation’s public health and safety net infrastructure. The virus appears to have an outsized effect on vulnerable Americans. (Ximena A. Levander and Sarah E. Wakeman, 3/17)

The biopharmaceutical industry is under unprecedented assault by the public and politicians. Hostility over launch prices for new drugs and post-launch price increases is broad and bipartisan, reflected in increasingly draconian legislative proposals and aggressive rebate payer negotiations. The net price of drugs — that’s the list price minus rebates and other reductions — is being squeezed, and the pressure won’t let up. (James C. Robinson, 3/13)

As a national advocate for a nonprofit organization working to protect the rights of L.G.B.T.Q. youth in America, I spend a lot of time looking down on wheat fields from tens of thousands of feet in the air. The constant flights from coast to coast and state capital to state capital give me plenty of time to reflect on the world in which today’s L.G.B.T.Q. young people are growing up. My recent reflections have been focused on the onslaught of harmful bills that discriminate against transgender and non-binary youth, and how to ensure they never pass into law. (Sam Brinton, 3/12)

Nearly 40% of Mississippians struggle with obesity, but the state’s occupational licensing regime is truly corpulent. The state Department of Health is now throwing its considerable weight against anyone who dares to offer weight-loss advice without government permission. Mississippi’s latest target is Donna Harris, a personal trainer at Madison County gym. She recently created an eight-week program for adults who want to slim down but are otherwise healthy. For $99, participants would receive one-on-one weight-loss coaching from Ms. Harris, among other perks. Seventy clients signed up, but Ms. Harris’s program also caught the attention of the state Department of Health, which can gobble entrepreneurs whole. It claimed Ms. Harris was working as an unlicensed dietitian, ordered her to cease and desist, and threatened her with up to six months in jail, a fine of up to $1,000, criminal charges and a civil suit. (3/15)

Two weeks ago I received a letter from Angie, a working mom. She wrote to me about her 12-year-old daughter, Addison, who has had Type 1 diabetes since she was 3. Sometimes, Angie and her husband, Steve — who have insurance — pay as much as $1,000 out of pocket per month for the medication and supplies their daughter needs to stay alive. That’s in addition to the $1,250 she and her husband are paying every month for their health insurance premiums. Angie has been fighting with insurance companies for nine years to get coverage for her daughter’s lifesaving health needs. And she’s not alone. As I talk to Kentuckians across the state, the No. 1 concern I hear about is access to affordable, quality health care. Kentucky has some of the worst health statistics in the nation. We have the highest mortality rate for cancer and among the worst rates of lung disease, diabetes and heart disease. Yet as Kentuckians struggle, Sen. Mitch McConnell has fought to make our health care system and its outcomes even worse. (Amy McGrath, 3/16)