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A United Nations investigation has concluded the Syrian government or its allies was likely responsible for attacks on a school, a hospital, and two other civilian facilities, but the probe avoided specifically blaming Syria’s main military sponsor, Russia, drawing rebukes from rights activists.Human rights groups criticized the report, whose executive summary was released on April 6, as well as the United Nations for restricting the investigation to a narrow line of inquiry.The inquiry produced “a “mealy-mouthed’ report, all to avoid offending Russia, the prime offender along with Syria,” Kenneth Roth, the head of Human Rights Watch, said on Twitter.UN Secretary General @AntonioGuterres gave an excessively narrow mandate to a board of inquiry into attacks on hospitals in Syria, and the inquiry now produces a “mealy-mouthed” report, all to avoid offending Russia, the prime offender along with Syria. https://t.co/JJfnkcNxqVpic.twitter.com/i81CWMD61C— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) April 7, 2020Rights groups have long pushed the world body to investigate alleged war crimes committed during the nine-year conflict, which has devastated Syria and killed hundreds of thousands.The executive summary of the 185-page confidential report said that four civilian facilities — a child-care facility, a hospital, a school, and a health care center — were targeted, and it was “highly probable” that the Syrian government’s forces, or its allies, were responsible.It was “plausible” that a separate attack on a second health center was also carried out by the Syrian government or its allies, the report found.U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appointed a board of inquiry nearly two years ago, authorizing it to investigate incidents in Syria’s northwest after Russia and Turkey agreed to establish a “de-escalation zone” in Idlib in September 2018.At the time of the board’s establishment, Russia called the war crimes accusations “a lie.” Syria also disputed the allegations.Rights groups have repeatedly accused Syrian government forces of committing wide-scale war crimes, purposely targeting civilians. Rights groups have also focused attention on Russia, which is Syria’s main economic and military sponsor.Russia’s intervention, in September 2015, turned the tide of the war to the advantage of Bashar al-Assad’s forces. The northwestern Idlib Province is currently the last rebel stronghold holding out.Last year, The New York Times published an in-depth investigation of Syrian civilian facilities purposely being targeted.The report, which included recordings of radio communications among Russian fighter pilots, directly incriminated Russia in attacks on civilian hospitals. 
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U.S. President Donald Trump sharply criticized the World Health Organization on Tuesday, accusing it of being too focused on China and issuing bad advice during the coronavirus outbreak. “The W.H.O. really blew it,” Trump said in a Twitter post. “For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look. Fortunately I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?” The WHO did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. On Jan. 31, the United Nations health organization advised countries to keep borders open despite the outbreak, although it noted that countries had the right to take measures to try to protect their citizens. That same day, Trump’s administration announced restrictions on travel from China. FILE =World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus attends a daily press briefing on the new coronavirus dubbed COVID-19, at the WHO headquaters on March 2, 2020 in Geneva.U.S. conservatives have increasingly criticized the WHO during the global pandemic, saying it relied on faulty data from China about the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. Last week, Republican Senator Marco Rubio called for the resignation of WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, saying “he allowed Beijing to use the WHO to mislead the global community.” 
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Ceri Weber had just begun to defend her dissertation when the chaos began: Echoes and voices interrupted her. Someone parroted her words. Then Britney Spears music came on, and someone told Weber to shut up. Someone threatened to rape her. Hackers had targeted the meeting on the video conference platform Zoom while Weber was completing the final step of her doctoral degree at Duke University. The harassment lasted 10 minutes — the result of an increasingly common form of cyber attack known as “Zoom bombing.” As tens of millions of people turn to video conferencing to stay connected during the coronavirus pandemic, many have reported uninvited guests who make threats, interject racist, anti-gay or anti-Semitic messages, or show pornographic images. The attacks have drawn the attention of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. “It seemed like someone was just being silly,” but then the intrusions “started to get more serious and threatening,” Weber recalled. “I was really in the zone and kept presenting.” She said she was more concerned about others in the chat who could have been scared. She was interrupted despite having selected “mute all” in the settings for the meeting she conducted from her home in Durham, North Carolina. A Massachusetts high school reported that someone interrupted a virtual class on Zoom, yelled profanity and revealed the teacher’s home address. Another school in that state reported a person who accessed a meeting and showed swastika tattoos, according to the FBI. The agency’s field office in Boston recommended that users of video-teleconference platforms prioritize their security by ensuring that hosts have sole control over screen-sharing features and meeting invitations. In New York, Attorney General Letitia James sent a letter to Zoom with questions about how users’ privacy and security are being protected. In a separate later, Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut sought information about how the company handles users’ personal data and guards against security threats and abuse. Zoom has referred to trolls as “party crashers,” which some critics have taken as a sign the company is downplaying the attacks. In a statement issued last week, the company told The Associated Press it takes the security of meetings seriously and encourages users to report any incidents directly to Zoom. The company suggested that people hosting large, public meetings confirm that they are the only ones who can share their screen and use features like mute controls. “For those hosting private meetings, password protections are on by default, and we recommend that users keep those protections on to prevent uninvited users from joining,” the company said. Zoom recently updated the default screen-sharing settings for education users so that teachers are by default the only ones who can share content. Despite the update, Nevada’s Clark County School District, which includes all public schools in Las Vegas, and the New York City Department of Education, which is responsible for the largest school district in the U.S., have told teachers to stop using Zoom. Zoom-bombing was always a threat given how the video conferencing app was configured — geared more toward user-friendliness than privacy, said Justin Brookman, director of privacy and technology policy at Consumer Reports. When shelter-at-home mandates suddenly converted Zoom into a lifeline for tens of millions of families, it became a juicy target for mischief, he said. For years, “the usability issues outweighed the potential security issues because society was less reliant on them. Obviously, that has changed dramatically over the last month,” Brookman added. Some Zoom-bombers have been able to randomly guess meeting IDs and crash conferences not configured to keep out interlopers, he said. In other cases, inexperienced users have exposed meeting IDs online, including U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who tweeted a screenshot of a Zoom Cabinet meeting that showed the ID and everyone’s screen name. Brookman said Zoom can do more to boost privacy protections for a massive user base that now ranges from elementary school children to senior citizens discussing their wills with attorneys. “A lot of people, including us, are critical of how they enable hosts to surveil users to make sure they are paying attention to the screen, or reading DMs or recording the call when it’s not entirely clear,” Brookman said. A mother in Georgia told a local TV station that her son was “embarrassed and a little hysterical” after someone hacked into his online class and showed pornography to the children and teacher. The Rev. Jason Wells was holding a publicly advertised forum recently on Zoom when a troll entered and used the chat box to post a racial slur so many times that it made the feature unusable for other participants. “I would not say this was a random vandal hoping to interrupt somebody,” said Wells, who is executive director of the New Hampshire Council of Churches in Concord and co-chair of a state chapter of the Poor People’s Campaign, part of a movement pioneered by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The intruder was eventually removed and blocked. As the Rev. Laura Everett delivered a sermon via Zoom for Boston’s First Baptist Church, a user who had seen the church service advertised entered the video conferencing session and shouted homophobic and racist slurs. Everett said she had tweeted the link to the sermon because she wanted “the doors of the church to be open to every weary soul who is looking for a word of comfort.” “This was, for all intents and purposes, a house of worship that was violated,” she said. “Zoom and every other business bears the primary responsibility for users’ safety.” In Oakland, California, Malachi Garza reported an attack on a Zoom conference she hosted for roughly 200 participants, including formerly incarcerated people who have experience with solitary confinement and are struggling with the pandemic’s stay-home orders. The conference organized by the philanthropic Solidare Network was interrupted by racist, anti-transgender language, and pornographic images were flashed on a shared screen.  Zoom needs to “tell the truth and call this what it really is,” Garza said. “It’s racial terror, not party crashers.”   
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Stuck in the same bind as many other Chinese farmers whose crops are rotting in their fields, Jiang Yuewu is preparing to throw out a 500-ton harvest of lotus root because anti-coronavirus controls are preventing traders from getting to his farm near Wuhan, where the global pandemic started.Chinese leaders are eager to revive the economy, but the bleak situation in Huangpi in Wuhan’s outskirts highlights the damage to farmers struggling to stay afloat after the country shut down for two months.
Authorities are easing travel controls after declaring victory over the virus, but flowers and some other crops deemed nonessential are withering while farmers wait for permission to move them to market.
Most transportation in and around Wuhan, a city of 11 million people in central China’s Hubei province, was suspended Jan. 23 to fight the coronavirus. Trucks carrying food supplies deemed essential were allowed through.
Jiang’s lotus roots, a starchy, popular ingredient in Chinese cooking, and some other crops were not included.  
“Vendors wanted to come and buy lotus roots but couldn’t make it,” said Jiang, 57, dressed in blue overalls and knee-high rubber boots. “If we don’t do our best, in the second half of the year, we will barely survive.”
The final restrictions on residents of Wuhan leaving the city are due to be lifted Wednesday, but farmers and companies still are working to restore supply chains that carry food to crowded cities and raw materials to factories.
The official China News Service reported that Hubei will create “green channels” to get production supplies to farmers and crops to market. Jiang and his neighbors in this area about 30 kilometers (20 miles) northeast of Wuhan’s city center said they still were waiting for clearance.
Guo Changqi, who raises flowers for sale in Wuhan, said officials visited to ask vegetable farmers about their losses. Not him.  
Guo said he has thrown away more than 20,000 pots of flowers, which usually sell for 5 to 6 yuan (70 to 85 cents) each at his in a wholesale market in Wuhan. The market has reopened, but there are few customers, he said.  
“We live on flowers,” said Guo, dressed in a wide-brimmed straw hat as he walked past rows of pots of dead flowers. “If we have no way to sell them, life will get harder.”
Farmers are hoping for government help.
“We can do nothing about the epidemic,” said Jiang. “If the government could find a way to sell lotus roots, it could minimize our losses, but so far they haven’t done anything.”
The lotus roots grow under knee-deep water in Jiang’s 20 football field-size ponds. Traders who supply markets as far away as Shenzhen, adjacent to Hong Kong in the southeast, usually pay 0.90 to 1 yuan (12 to 14 cents) per 500 grams (per pound).
Some farmers are finding temporary outlets for sales through volunteers in Wuhan helping the elderly and other vulnerable people get food supplies. They buy direct from farmers and arrange delivery to apartment complexes.  
Online grocery orders surged in Wuhan and other cities after families were ordered to stay home. The government also arranged food deliveries. But some residents had no access to websites and smartphone apps.
“Especially for empty-nesters, they didn’t know how to buy food from this channel even though they had money,” said volunteer Luo Hao.
Jiang’s neighbor Dong Yumei, who raises cabbages, said her sales have fallen by 80%. Most of her business now is with the volunteer network in Wuhan.
“The farmers here are so nice and the vegetables are cheaper,” said Luo. “They’re also fresh from the farm.”
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People around the world, trapped in their homes amid a health crisis, have something to look forward to this week when the full moon appears as a supermoon for the second of three times this year and in its most spectacular form.  A phenomenon known as the Super Pink Moon will make an appearance over a couple of nights this week. It will be the biggest and brightest on Tuesday, but its appearance on Monday and Wednesday will also be worth viewing. Housebound people are more likely than usual to want to step out into their yards or poke their heads out of their windows to watch this so-called supermoon and develop a new appreciation for the natural world or renew an old one. A full moon appears approximately once a month. When the moon gets closest to the Earth in its orbit, it appears bigger and brighter than usual and is called a supermoon. A supermoon can look up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter than a regular monthly full moon.  Most years have 12 full moons, but this year will have 13, three of them supermoons. The April supermoon follows the one of March 9 and precedes the one coming on May 7. In the United States, the April supermoon is also known as the Pink Supermoon, a name given it by Native Americans because it comes out around the time the moss pink wildflower is in bloom. April’s full moon promises to be the most spectacular full moon of this year because it will be closest to the Earth while in its “full” phase. The distance between the two on April 7 will be 356,906 kilometers.   The timing for the April supermoon varies in different parts of the world. On the U.S. West Coast, this year’s Super Pink Moon appears about 7:30 p.m. on April 7, and in Sydney, Australia, at 12:30 p.m. on April 8. But the best time to watch it anywhere is after sunset, when the sky darkens and the moon rises over the eastern horizon.  Experts say there is no need to look for its peak at 100% illumination because the moon is then so white and bright that you cannot look at it for more than a few seconds. Those who do not have an east-facing view can wait for the moonset on April 8. It is expected to be as spectacular as the moonrise.  The year 2020 will also have a rare blue moon. A blue moon is the second full moon in the same month – something that happens only every 2½ or three years. English-language speakers are familiar with the phrase “once in a blue moon,” referring to something that happens rarely. This year’s blue moon will fall on Halloween, October 31, something that happens once in two decades, so that makes it even more special. Moongazers will have plenty to watch in 2020 and under the current circumstances, watching night sky events could gain more attention among people who have had little interest in them before. 
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The mayor of one Cameroon city says wearing a mask will be mandatory to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus that has already infected 658 people across the country and nine others have died. Roger Mbassa Ndine, mayor of the coastal city of Douala, made the announcement Monday as crews began  fanning out across the city Monday to pass out washable masks, in a new awareness campaign that will take them to other boroughs in the coming days.  Nemache Celestin, a Douala teacher, welcomes the mayor’s decision to make wearing a mask compulsory, saying “Cameroon and Africa do not have enough resources to deal with this pandemic.”  She said “everyone must do everything to protect us from the pandemic.” In recent days, police in Cameroon began arresting people who ignored measures aimed at curtailing the spread of the coronavirus. Despite government warnings, officials say a majority of Cameroonians are not taking the coronavirus seriously, and authorities are taking steps to enforce social distancing rules. President Sassou-Nguesso declared a state of health emergency, with a curfew from 8 pm to 5 am and everyone must stay at home, with the exception of people who provide essential services and goods. 
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Human Rights Watch released a report early Monday urging the United States to ease sanctions on Iran because of the negative impact they are having on the country’s ability to control and treat COVID-19. “The U.S. should take immediate action to ease U.S. sanctions and expand licensing of sanctions-exempt items to ensure Iran’s access to essential humanitarian resources during the pandemic,” HRW said in a report published on its website.  In 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump imposed sweeping sanctions on Tehran after withdrawing unilaterally from the 2015 nuclear deal. Human rights groups and others say the restrictions have slowed efforts to fight the coronavirus that had infected more than 60,000 and caused more than 3,700 deaths. The report said that U.S. restrictions on financing, combined with the depreciation of the Iranian currency rial, have limited Iranian companies and hospitals from importing essential medicines and medical equipment needed for critical medical care. According to international law, a country or a bloc of nations enforcing economic sanctions should consider the impact on the affected population, especially regarding their access to goods essential to life, including medicines and food.   “It’s bad enough that Iranians are saddled with a brutal, self-serving government …” said Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth. “But it is wrong and callous for the Trump administration to compound Iranians’ misery by depriving them of access to the critical medical resources they urgently need.” 
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U.S. President Donald Trump is disputing the findings of an inspector general whose report documents continued shortages of protective equipment for hospital workers and COVID-19 testing kits.  “It is wrong,” the president responded on Monday when asked about the report from the Health and Human Services’ acting inspector general. “We have done more testing, more results than anywhere in the world.”  Trump displayed a chart for reporters showing that 1.79 million tests for COVID-19 have been conducted in the United States.  “That number is growing by 125,000 people every day,” he added.  The president declined to further address the substance of questions about the report from the HHS inspector general.  President demands nameTrump, who has repeatedly criticized government watchdogs and whistleblowers, demanded of reporters who raised the issue at a White House briefing to give him the name of the official and when the person was appointed.  “We’re going to take a look at it,” said the president, minutes later, when told by a reporter that the acting inspector general of HHS is Christi Grimm. Trump then asked how long Grimm has been in the government. A reporter replied that she held positions in previous administrations. “You mean the Obama administration,” Trump responded. “Thank you for telling me that.” Grimm has been employed at HHS since 1999 and has served in both Democratic and Republican-led administrations.  Late Friday, Trump informed Congress he was removing the inspector general for the U.S. intelligence community, Michael Atkinson, claiming he had lost trust in him. 300 hospital officials interviewedThe HHS inspector general’s report, released on Monday, is based on interviews with more than 300 hospital administrators from 46 states. The most commonly reported challenges, according to the report, “centered on hospitals’ efforts to confirm cases of COVID-19, to keep healthcare staff safe, and to provide needed services to patients requiring hospital care for a wide array of medical reasons, including COVID-19.”   The assistant inspector general  at HHS, Ann Maxwell, told NBC News that she was “taken aback” by the horror stories she heard in interviews with hospital administrators. “It is unprecedented,” Maxwell said. “I think one moment that stands out for me is when I was talking to a hospital administrator and he told me that he had staff in the hospital out trying to procure masks and gloves from auto part shops, from home supply stores, from beauty salons, from art supply stores.” The president has repeatedly denied any shortcomings in the federal government’s response, asserting that it is primarily the responsibility of states to get needed supplies and they shouldn’t view Washington as a “shipping clerk.”  When asked by reporters about such complaints from states and the medical community, Trump has accused the media of being negative and nasty by raising such issues.  Surprised by decision At Monday’s media briefing by the White House coronavirus task force, the assistant secretary of health, Admiral Brett Giroir of the U.S. Public Health Service, expressed surprise about how he was informed of the inspector general’s findings.  If there was such a problem on March 23 or 24, Giroir said, “why did I found out about the tests from them on the news media at 8 o’clock this morning?”  The admiral added the inspector general was “ethically obliged” to immediately tell him where there was a problem with supplies so he could have acted on it. In the United States, there are 365,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases — the most of any country. The number of deaths in the U.S. from the coronavirus has surpassed 10,000 with about one-third of the fatalities just in New York City.  The president agreed on Monday to a request from the governor of the state of New York for a U.S. navy hospital ship docked at New York City’s Pier 90 to treat coronavirus patients.  “This means 1,000 additional beds staffed by federal personnel,” tweeted Andrew Cuomo. “This will provide much-needed relief for our over stressed hospital systems.”  #CoronavirusNYChttps://t.co/K5fBTFkYgU— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) April 6, 2020“We hadn’t that in mind at all but we’re going to let him do it” as well as allow COVID-19 patients from the state of New Jersey, Trump told reporters.    
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Hundreds of coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Los Angeles, California, and as more tests are being done, this number continues to grow while hospitalizations climb sharply. Bars and movie theatres are closed, access to beaches is restricted and Californians have been ordered to stay home to slow the spread of the virus. Khrystyna Shevchenko has more on what life in LA looks like. Anna Rice narrates her story.
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Fake news about the coronavirus can do real harm. Polygraph.info is spotlighting fact-checks from other reliable sources here​.Daily Debunk Claim: President Donald Trump has said that the government’s stockpile of emergency medical supplies he inherited from his predecessor was an “empty shelf.”Verdict: FalseRead the full story: FactCheck.org​ Social Media Disinfo​Godirect.govCirculating on social media: A post claiming you can track your coronavirus economic stimulus check from the U.S. government by calling a toll-free telephone number..Verdict: FalseRead the full story: “False claim: Hotline to check status of stimulus check” — Reuters Factual Reads on CoronavirusA small trial finds that hydroxychloroquine is not effective for treating coronavirus
[A] study just published in a French medical journal provides new evidence that hydroxychloroquine does not appear to help the immune system clear the coronavirus from the body.
— The Conversation, April 3 ​
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Officials in southern Iraq say three rockets landed near the site of a foreign oil field Monday.  The rockets targeted the Burjesia area of Basra, Iraq’s main southern city. Authorities say a rocket launcher was found nearby after the attack.   The strike caused “no significant damage,” according to the Associated Press. There has been no immediate claim of responsibility.  Reuters reports the site of the attack “has been largely empty in recent weeks because of the evacuation of nearly all foreign personnel due to the coronavirus crisis.”    
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Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says he will declare a 30-day state of emergency in parts of the country in response to the rising confirmed cases of coronavirus. Prime Minister Abe announced his intentions Monday during a televised speech after meeting with a special task force created to deal with the outbreak.  Abe said he will formally impose the declaration Tuesday for Tokyo and six other prefectures, including the central port city of Osaka.  The declaration will give local authorities the legal power to call on its citizens to stay at home and to ask schools and businesses to close.  Japan’s constitution, which weighs heavily in favor of civil liberties, does not empower the government to impose a mandatory quarantine. The prime minister also announced a $990 billion stimulus bill to blunt the economic downturn caused by the pandemic, including $55 billion in direct payments to households and small businesses. Abe has been reluctant to invoke a state of emergency, but appears to have been prompted to move after Tokyo reported 143 new cases reported Sunday, the largest number of confirmations in a single day, bringing the total number of cases in the capital to over 1,000. Nationally, there are 3,500 confirmed cases of novel coronavirus, including more than 70 fatalities.         
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Asian markets are trading higher Monday as hopes rise that the coronavirus pandemic appears to be easing. Japan’s main Nikkei index was trading more than 2.5% higher in late day trading, while Australia’s S&P/ASX was trading up well over 3.7%. The KOSPI in Seoul was up 2.6% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng had gained well over one percent.  Shanghai’s index was closed for a public holiday. Investors appeared to be encouraged by a slowdown in the number of COVID-19 fatalities in New York City, Spain and Italy, evidence that the orders for residents to stay at home and avoid spreading the disease were taking hold.  The good news is sure to provide relief from last Friday’s massive losses on Wall Street after the U.S. said employers cut over 700,000 jobs last month, the worst report in more than a decade. But oil markets were trading lower on Monday as Saudi Arabia and Russia continue to be locked in a contentious price war, aggravated by falling demand due to the pandemic. U.S. crude was down 7% at just over $26 per barrel, while Brent crude, the global benchmark, had lost 6%, to list at $32 per barrel. 
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Two French hospitals are poised to start experimental treatment with sandworm blood of patients suffering of respiratory problems caused by the new coronavirus. Doctors at Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital and Georges Pompidou Hospital in Paris are going to test in coming days whether it is safe to inject the sandworm blood, directly in human blood, hoping to increase oxygen levels in the tissue of infected patients. The French government drug agency ANSM approved the phase one clinical trial on March 27 and the government ethics committee cleared it on April 4.  Biology researcher Franck Zal, the CEO of biotechnology company Hemarina, observed years ago that sandworms, also known as lugworms, could survived on land and in water. “I observed that the worm only breathes when it is in the sea, and when it is in the sand it stops breathing for 6 hours. So, I discovered that this molecule is its little oxygen tank that allows it to hold six hours until the next high tide,” Zal said. The treatment Zal subsequently invented has been applied to kidney transplant patients and improved the oxygen levels of the organs. Hemarina now has a worm farm on the Atlantic island of Noirmoutier. The test will start with 10 coronavirus patients who are near death and will not include a control group. If the clinical trial goes to the next phase, it will include a control group. The treatment will be administered one patient at a time and will be given only to those whose families have given consent. French doctors admit that the treatment is unusual and in the early stage of testing, but due to urgent need to find solutions for the new COVID-19, they believe it is worth trying. France had reported more than 8,000 deaths related to the coronavirus as of Sunday.  
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A slight dip in new coronavirus deaths in New York over the last 24 hours may be a glimmer of hope that the spread is slowing, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Sunday as overall fatalities in the state climbed to nearly 4,200.
Cuomo said it was too soon to determine whether the pandemic had reached its apex.
“We could either be very near the apex, or the apex could be a plateau and we could be on the plateau right now,” Cuomo said. “You can’t do this day to day. You have to look at three or four days to see a pattern.”
The state reported 594 new coronavirus deaths on Sunday — a small decrease compared to the 630 new fatalities announced the day before. ICU admissions and intubations were also down, the governor said, while the discharge rate from hospitals was rising.
Later in the evening, New York City officials also reported a dip in fatalities. As of 4:45 p.m. it said deaths had risen by 218 since the evening before, to a total of 2,472. By comparison, there were 387 new deaths reported in the previous 24 hours and 305 the day before that.
Cuomo sounded cautiously optimistic even as he urged New Yorkers to remain vigilant and continue adhering to the strict social distancing policies in place.
“The coronavirus is truly vicious,” he said. “It’s an effective killer. People who are very vulnerable must stay isolated and protected.”
New Yorkers hunkered down Sunday as the city entered what authorities called a critical phase of the crisis. Those venturing outdoors for groceries or exercise largely heeded the city’s new guidance to wear face coverings such as scarves or bandannas — a sight far less common a week ago.
Mayor Bill de Blasio also found cause for encouragement, telling reporters that while the city still needs thousands more ventilators, its supply had outlasted earlier projections. Like Cuomo, he stopped short of declaring a turning point in the crisis.
“I see a few signs that are a little hopeful, for sure,” he said. “But I think it’s early to be able to declare that. Let’s hope and pray, but we’re not quite there yet.”
Here are the latest coronavirus developments in New York:HEALTH CARE CHALLENGES
The governor said the state’s health care system remained over capacity, adding New York is “running short on supplies all across the board.” More than 122,000 people have tested positive for the coronavirus and at least 16,000 people remain hospitalized.
“The operational challenge for the health care system is impossible,” Cuomo said. “It’s not an exercise. It’s not a drill. It’s a statement of reality.”
The federal government was deploying 1,000 doctors, nurses and respiratory technicians to New York, including 325 scheduled to begin arriving in New York City as early as Sunday.
The statewide balance of coronavirus cases has been “relatively stable” over the past few days, Cuomo said, but officials were tracking what they called a shift to Long Island. Nassau and Suffolk counties together have more than 26,000 cases.MORE MEDICS REQUESTED
De Blasio reiterated his call Sunday for a federal enlistment of health care workers, warning of a “huge surge in these coming days” that could cripple the city’s already strained hospital system.
In all, he said New York City is going to need 45,000 doctors, nurses, and respiratory therapists to get through the crisis.
Some 300 military medical personnel were arriving in New York, an infusion the mayor called a good start. He has asked for about 1,450.
“Right now there’s a peacetime approach in Washington,” de Blasio said, “and that won’t cut it.”
SPRING BREAK SCRAPPED
The city canceled all of spring break for its public schools and, in a controversial reversal, called for classes to be held on the start of Passover and Good Friday. School officials announced the decision Friday, saying it was important to keep remote learning uninterrupted.
The announcement roiled the city’s teachers union.
“No matter how angry and frustrated we are right now, we must focus on the most important thing, which is to get through the crisis,” Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said in a letter to his members. “I am sadly sure that there will be many more tough challenges in the days and weeks to come.”    
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As the first alarms sounded in early January that an outbreak of a novel coronavirus in China might ignite a global pandemic, the Trump administration squandered nearly two months that could have been used to bolster the federal stockpile of critically needed medical supplies and equipment.A review of federal purchasing contracts by The Associated Press shows federal agencies largely waited until mid-March to begin placing bulk orders of N95 respirator masks, mechanical ventilators and other equipment needed by front-line health care workers.By that time, hospitals in several states were treating thousands of infected patients without adequate equipment and were pleading for shipments from the Strategic National Stockpile. That federal cache of supplies was created more than 20 years ago to help bridge gaps in the medical and pharmaceutical supply chains during a national emergency.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline. Embed” />CopyUS Hospitals Get Ready For COVID-19Now, three months into the crisis, that stockpile is nearly drained just as the numbers of patients needing critical care is surging. Some state and local officials report receiving broken ventilators and decade-old dry-rotted masks.“We basically wasted two months,” Kathleen Sebelius, health and human services secretary during the Obama administration, told AP.As early as mid-January, U.S. officials could see that hospitals in China’s Hubei province were overwhelmed with infected patients, with many left dependent on ventilator machines to breathe. Italy soon followed, with hospitals scrambling for doctors, beds and equipment.HHS did not respond to questions about why federal officials waited to order medical supplies until stocks were running critically low. But President Donald Trump has asserted that the federal government should take a back seat to states when it comes to dealing with the pandemic.Trump and his appointees have urged state and local governments, and hospitals, to buy their own masks and breathing machines, saying requests to the dwindling national stockpile should be a last resort.“The notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile,” Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and adviser, said at a White House briefing Thursday. “It’s not supposed to be state stockpiles that they then use.”Experts in emergency preparedness and response have expressed dismay at such statements, saying the federal government must take the lead in ensuring medical supplies are available and distributed where they are needed most.“States do not have the purchasing power of the federal government. They do not have the ability to run a deficit like the federal government. They do not have the logistical power of the federal government,” said Sebelius, who served as governor of Kansas before serving as the nation’s top health care official.Because of the fractured federal response to COVID-19, state governors say they’re now bidding against federal agencies and each other for scarce supplies, driving up prices.“You now literally will have a company call you up and say, ‘Well, California just outbid you,’” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, D-N.Y., said Tuesday. “It’s like being on eBay with 50 other states, bidding on a ventilator.”For nearly a month, Trump rebuffed calls from Cuomo and others to use his authority under the Defense Production Act to order companies to increase production of ventilators and personal protective equipment. He suggested the private sector was acting sufficiently on its own.More than three months after China revealed the first COVID-19 cases, Trump finally relented last week, saying he will order companies to ramp up production of critical supplies. By then, confirmed cases of COVID-19 within the United States had surged to the highest in the world. Now, the number of people infected in the U.S. has climbed to more than 312,000 and deaths have topped 8,500.Trump spent January and February playing down the threat from the new virus. He derided warnings of pandemic reaching the U.S. as a hoax perpetrated by Democrats and the media. As the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global public health emergency on Jan. 30, Trump assured the American people that the virus was “very well under control” and he predicted “a very good ending.”His administration was so confident that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Feb. 7 that the government had airlifted nearly 18 tons of donated respirator masks, surgical masks, gowns and other medical supplies to China.On Feb. 24, the White House sent Congress an initial $2.5 billion funding request to address the coronavirus outbreak. The next day, federal health experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that the virus was spreading quickly in the U.S. and predicted that disruptions to daily life could be “severe,” including school and business closures.Unfazed, HHS Secretary Alex Azar told lawmakers on Feb. 27 that “the immediate risk to the American public remains low.”During those crucial early weeks when the U.S. could have been tracking the spread of the disease and containing it, hardly anyone was being tested after a series of federal blunders led to a shortage of tests and testing capacity, as AP reported last month.Without data showing how widespread the disease was, federal and state governments failed to prepare.By the middle of March, hospitals in New York, Seattle and New Orleans were reporting a surge in sick patients. Doctors and nurses took to social media to express their alarm at dwindling supplies of such basic equipment as masks and gowns.Trump accused some Democratic governors of exaggerating the need and derided those that criticized the federal response as complainers and snakes.“I want them to be appreciative,” Trump said on March 27.At the start of the crisis, an HHS spokeswoman said the Strategic National Stockpile had about 13 million N95 respirator masks, which filter out about 95% of all liquid or airborne particles and are critical to prevent health care workers from becoming infected. That’s just a small fraction of what hospitals need to protect their workers, who normally would wear a new mask for each patient, but who now are often issued only one to last for days.Trump during a White House briefing on March 26 claimed that he had inherited an “empty shelf” from the Obama administration, but added that “we’re really filling it up, and we fill it up rapidly.”Federal purchasing records, however, show the Trump administration delayed making big orders for additional supplies until the virus had taken root and was spreading.HHS first announced its intent to purchase 500 million N95 masks on March 4, with plans to distribute them over the next 18 months. The following day, Congress passed an $8.3 billion coronavirus spending bill, more than three times what the White House had originally asked for.Eight days later, on March 13, Trump declared the outbreak a national emergency. That was almost six weeks after the WHO’s action. By then, thousands of U.S. schools had closed, the National Basketball Association had put its season on temporary hiatus and there were 1,700 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the country.The government had already sent tens of thousands of masks, gloves and gowns from the stockpile to Washington state, which was hit early with a coronavirus outbreak. But state officials even then said the supplies weren’t enough.Federal contracting records show that HHS had made an initial order March 12 for $4.8 million of N95 masks from 3M, the largest U.S.-based manufacturer, which had ramped up production weeks earlier in response to the pandemic. HHS followed up with a larger $173 million order on March 21, but those contracts don’t require 3M to start making deliveries to the national stockpile until the end of April. That’s after the White House has projected the pandemic will reach its peak.On Thursday, Trump threatened in a Tweet to “hit 3M hard” through a Defense Production Act order, saying the company “will have a big price to pay!” He gave no specifics.HHS declined this past week to say how many N95 masks it has on hand. But as of March 31, the White House said more than 11.6 million had been distributed to state and local governments from the national stockpile — about 90% of what was available at the start of the year.Dr. Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at HHS, testified before Congress last month that the country would need roughly 3.5 billion N-95 respirators to get through the pandemic, but the national supply chain then had just about 1% of that amount.Greg Burel, director of the Strategic National Stockpile from 2007 until his retirement at the start of this year, said the cache was only ever intended to serve as a short-term “bridge-stock.”The stockpile was created in 1999 to prevent supply-chain disruptions for the predicted Y2K computer problems. It expanded after 9/11 to prepare for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear attacks. Congress provided money in 2006 to prepare for a potential influenza pandemic, though Burel said much of that stock was used during the H1N1 flu outbreak three years later.“There’s never enough money to buy everything that we want to see on those shelves,” said Burel, who stressed the stockpile uses its annual funding to prepare for a wide array of potential threats.“Most of the time, commercially available products like masks can be bought in quantity at the time of an event.”This time, it hasn’t worked out that way. As AP reported last month, much of the world’s supply of N95 masks and other basic medical supplies is made in China, the first nation hit by COVID-19. As a result, the Chinese government required its producers to reserve N95 respirators for domestic use. China resumed exports of the precious masks only in recent days.Experts are now worried the U.S. will also soon exhaust its supply of ventilators, which can cost upward of $12,000 each.The White House said Tuesday that it had already distributed nearly half the breathing machines in the stockpile, which at the beginning of March had 16,660; some of them dated back to the flurry of post-9/11 purchasing. An additional 2,425 were out for maintenance.Cuomo said New York may need as many as 40,000 ventilators to deal with the outbreak that is already overwhelming hospitals there.Throughout March, governors and mayors of big cities urged Trump to use his authority under the Defense Production Act to direct private companies to ramp up production of ventilators. It wasn’t until last week that Trump finally said he would use that power to order General Motors to begin manufacturing ventilators — work the company had already announced was underway.The federal government had made an effort to prepare for a surge in the need for ventilators, but it was allowed to languish. Since 2014, HHS has paid a private company, Respironics Inc., $13.8 million to develop a cheaper, less complicated ventilator that could be bought in bulk to replenish the national stockpile. In September, HHS placed a $32.8 million order with the Dutch-owned company for 10,000 of the new model, set for delivery by 2022, federal contracts show.Respironics’ parent company, Royal Philips, said it’s planning to double U.S. production of ventilators to 2,000 a week by the end of May.Steve Klink, a spokesman for Royal Philips in Amsterdam, said the company is now focused on producing its other commercial models and will deliver the first ventilators to the national stockpile by August, long after the White House projects COVID-19 cases will peak.Trump, who pledged on March 27 that his administration would ensure that 100,000 additional ventilators would be made available “within 100 days,” said on Thursday that he’ll use the Defense Production Act to order Respironics and other ventilator makers to step up production.It’s not clear that Trump’s order would translate into the 100,000 new ventilators he promised. In a House Oversight and Reform Committee briefing last week, top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials hedged, saying 100,000 ventilators would be available by late June “at the earliest.”Cuomo predicted on Friday that New York would run out within days. With coronavirus deaths in his state surging, the governor vowed to use his authority to seize ventilators, masks and protective gear from private hospitals that aren’t utilizing them.Meanwhile, federal health authorities are lowering standards.New guidance from the Food and Drug Administration allows hospitals to use emergency ventilators typically used in ambulances and anesthesia gas machines in place of standard ventilators. The agency also said nightstand CPAP machines used to treat sleep apnea and snoring could also be used to keep coronavirus patients breathing, as a last resort.The CDC advised health care workers last month to use homemade masks or bandanas if they run out of proper gear. Across the country, hospitals have issued urgent pleas for volunteers who know how to sew.President Trump provided his own input, suggesting that Americans without access to factory-produced masks could cover their faces with scarves.“A scarf is highly recommended by the professionals,” Trump said during a White House briefing Wednesday. “And I think, in a certain way, depending on the fabric — I think, in a certain way, a scarf is better. It’s actually better.” 
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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was diagnosed with the new coronavirus more than a week ago, was admitted to a hospital Sunday for tests.  Johnson’s office said he was hospitalized because he still has symptoms 10 days after testing positive for the virus. His admission to an undisclosed hospital in London wasn’t an emergency.Downing St. said it was a “precautionary step” and Johnson remains in charge of the government.Johnson, 55, has been quarantined in his Downing St. residence since being diagnosed with COVID-19 on March 26.Johnson has continued to chair daily meetings on Britain’s response to the outbreak, and has released several video messages during his 10 days in isolation.In a message on Friday, he said he was feeling better but still had a fever.The virus causes mild to moderate symptoms in most people, but for some, especially older adults and the infirm, it can cause pneumonia and lead to death.Johnson has received medical advice by phone during his illness, but going to a hospital means doctors can see him in person.Johnson’s fiancee Carrie Symonds, 32, revealed Saturday that she spent a week with coronavirus symptoms, though she wasn’t tested. Symonds, who is pregnant, said she was now “on the mend.”The government said Sunday that almost 48,000 people have been confirmed to have COVID-19 in the U.K., and 4,934 have died.Johnson replaced Theresa May as prime minister in July and won a resounding election victory in December on a promise to complete Britain’s exit from the European Union. But Brexit has been overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic sweeping the globe.Johnson’s government was slower than those in some European countries to impose restrictions on daily life in response to the pandemic, but Britain has been effectively in lockdown since March 23.Several other members of Johnson’s government have also tested positive for the virus, including Health Secretary Matt Hancock and junior Health Minister Nadine Dorries. Both have recovered.News of Johnson’s admission to hospital came an hour after Queen Elizabeth II made a rare televised address to the nation, urging Britons to remain “united and resolute” in the fight against the virus.Drawing parallels to the struggle of World War II, the 93-year-old queen said that “while we may have more still to endure, better days will return: we will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again.”
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