March 26, 2020, 9:00 p.m. ET March 26, 2020, 9:00 p.m. ET By As women give birth, health systems are straining to help them. Credit... Kenesha Sneed [This article is a partnership between The New York Times and The Fuller Project.] On Wednesday, March 18, 28-year-old Latoyha Young and her mother, Thomasina Hayten, rushed to Sutter Health Hospital in Sacramento, believing that Young was in labor. Hospital staff sent her home — she wasn’t far enough along. Two days later, Young spent her expected due date searching stores in Sacramento for key items: baby wipes, diapers and hand sanitizer. The mother-and-daughter pair, who are homeless, dependent on city transportation and have been staying temporarily with a relative, needed supplies before a shelter-in-place order that went into effect on Monday. They found wipes, but no diapers. That evening, they returned to the hospital, but were sent home. Young was only two centimeters dilated, rather than the three inches that would indicate active labor. Nothing seemed to be going right. The plan had been for Young to be accompanied during childbirth by a community doula, funded by a grant through Sacramentos’s Black Child Legacy Campaign. But when Young’s doula, Joy Dean, drove them to another hospital — one of the few that accepts her Medi-Cal plan, California’s Medicaid program — the new limits on visitors permitted in labor and delivery departments in an attempt to contain the spread of Covid-19 meant that she was unable to accompany them inside. “I’m not worried about the virus. I’m worried about going back and they’re not listening to me,” said Young, adding that if Dean had been with her, they might have treated her differently. As the United States struggles to respond to the Covid-19 crisis, tens of thousands of women across the country are giving birth in unprecedented circumstances. Hospitals are shifting their prenatal and postpartum care to telemedicine, limiting or outright banning visitors, offering elective inductions to full-term mothers and converting labor and delivery wards to coronavirus units. These changes are leaving health care providers, industry associations and patients reeling as they try to make informed decisions. “It’s changing day by day,” said Thorild Urdal, a nurse in the San Francisco Bay Area with almost 35 years of experience in labor and delivery. Eileen Guo is a California-based contributing reporter with The Fuller Project, a journalism nonprofit that reports on global issues impacting women. Francesca Donner and Alisha Haridasani Gupta contributed reporting. Read more

March 26, 2020, 8:30 p.m. ET March 26, 2020, 8:30 p.m. ET By Materials for Major League Baseball uniforms get converted to protective masks. Protective masks for medical professionals made from material intended for Yankees and Phillies uniforms are being made by the company Fanatics in Pennsylvania. Credit... Fanatics Fanatics, the company that manufactures the Nike uniforms for Major League Baseball, has temporarily converted its domestic factory in Easton, Pa., to produce desperately needed protective masks and gowns for medical professionals who are fighting the pandemic in the United States. The masks are made from the same bolts of polyester mesh fabric used to make big-league uniforms, and the first prototypes bear the distinctive pinstripes of the Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies, who would have played on Thursday had opening day proceeded as scheduled. “We’ve got tremendous amounts of fabric, which is exactly what the players wear,” said Michael Rubin, the founder and executive chairman of Fanatics and a part owner of the Philadelphia 76ers of the N.B.A. “We’re just taking it and making the masks and gowns that can be used by the people who are working to save lives every day.” Protective masks have been in short supply across the country, leaving health care workers more vulnerable to infection as they work with patients being treated or tested for Covid-19. The coronavirus is generally transmitted through viral droplets — often emitted by coughing, spitting or sneezing — and from contaminated surfaces. At best, doctors should be wearing respirators, eye protection and gloves. Gowns are also needed because the virus can survive for periods of time on surfaces of some materials. Rubin said prototypes of the new masks made with the material for baseball uniforms were developed last week, with help from experts from the St. Luke’s hospital system in Pennsylvania. The masks will go there and to the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency first. He said that they provided basic protection, not the best protection found in respirators, but that they were still useful in a crisis. They would not be approved for surgery. March and April are normally months when Fanatics is busy producing uniforms for teams and for commercial sales, so Rubin called M.L.B. Commissioner Rob Manfred for permission to use the material for the masks and gowns. Manfred was eager to support the project. The first masks, bearing the Phillies and Yankees’ pinstripes, came out of production on Wednesday and were expected to be distributed to hospitals within a couple of days. Fanatics hopes to produce at least 10,000 masks and gowns per day to start, but Rubin said that they hoped to increase to 15,000 per day. He said they had enough uniform material in stock for two months. After supplying hospitals in Pennsylvania, Fanatics will look toward New Jersey and New York with masks and gowns made from Yankees pinstripes. If they have the capacity to produce for other areas, and it is feasible, those could be made from the uniforms of the teams in those areas, too. Read more

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March 26, 2020, 8:15 p.m. ET March 26, 2020, 8:15 p.m. ET By New York City Ballet cancels its season, but it will pay its employees. Taylor Stanley (in air) and members of New York City Ballet last May in George Balanchine’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which was to have been performed again in spring. Credit... Andrea Mohin/The New York Times New York City Ballet announced on Thursday that it was canceling its spring season because of the coronavirus pandemic, but the company plans to pay its dancers, musicians and other employees through May 31, the date the season was to have ended. The cancellation was expected, with museums shut down, theaters dark and cultural events of every kind on hold across the city. The decision means delays for two world-premiere works, which will be postponed to another season. City Ballet board members approved the plan on a Wednesday afternoon conference call, said Katherine E. Brown, the company’s executive director. The cancellation of the season — which was set to begin on April 21 — would mean a projected financial loss of about $8 million for the company by the end of this fiscal year, which includes lost revenue from a spring gala. The decision to pay employees will be a relief to 100 dancers and 62 musicians who already get by on inconsistent streams of income, based on when they are rehearsing and performing throughout the year. For now, their payment schedule is the same as it would have been without the pandemic: They will be paid until the end of the spring season, and then will face a short layoff. The employees who are to be paid and receive benefits through the dark season include the dancers, musicians, stagehands, costume designers, security personnel, ushers and administrators. City Ballet’s spring season was to have included world premieres by Pam Tanowitz, who was commissioned to create her second work for the company; and Jamar Roberts, the resident choreographer for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. The new premiere dates have not yet been decided. Ballet companies across the country have been grappling with the consequences of canceled programming. American Ballet Theater, which canceled touring shows in four cities because of the pandemic, started its own relief fund to help pay employees like its dancers, production crew, rehearsal pianists and ballet masters. Read more

March 26, 2020, 8:00 p.m. ET March 26, 2020, 8:00 p.m. ET By Daily podcasters are broadcasting from closets and even from under blankets. Stacey Vanek Smith, a host of the podcast “The Indicator,” rebuilds her “studio” every day. Credit... Stacey Vanek Smith When it’s time to get to work, after a morning teleconference and a cup (or two) of coffee, Cardiff Garcia combs his hair, heads into the closet of his Upper West Side apartment and hangs a blanket over his head. Waiting for his FaceTime call is Stacey Vanek Smith, who answers from a makeshift fort — her own blanket, stretched over two side chairs — that she rebuilds each day in her Brooklyn living room. For Smith and Garcia, hosts of the daily economics podcast “The Indicator” from NPR, these improvised, at-home recording booths are just one consequence of the coronavirus pandemic. As statewide isolation orders have forced millions of Americans to reimagine their work, daily podcasters like Smith and Garcia have pivoted without missing a beat, broadcasting from closets and basements — or any other insulated place that can fit a dynamic microphone — to provide a nation of sequestered listeners with reliable news updates, a sense of community and a comforting voice. “We want to be as much of a public service as we can,” Smith said. Until 2017, when The New York Times started “The Daily,” daily news podcasts had been a tiny subset of the medium, which was then defined by talk shows on one end (“WTF With Marc Maron,” Bill Simmons’s “The B.S. Report”) and prestige, narrative-driven series on the other (“Serial,” “Radiolab”). But in recent years, the number and variety of daily programs, labors of love and endurance that can produce around 250 episodes annually, has skyrocketed. According to rankings published by the analytics firm Podtrac, four out of the five most popular podcasts in February were dailies. Akilah Hughes and Gideon Resnick, hosts of the daily news and politics podcast “What a Day” from Crooked Media, are among those who have reoriented their shows to meet the moment. When they started “What a Day” in October, the pair expected their first year would be dominated by Democratic primary coverage. Instead, they’ve spent much of the past two months interviewing epidemiologists and beleaguered health care workers. “It felt important to do what we could to help explain how Covid-19 is affecting the country,” Hughes said. “We can all be jerks about politics in October.” Read more

March 26, 2020, 7:45 p.m. ET March 26, 2020, 7:45 p.m. ET By Internet challenges are keeping us occupied. Screen grabs of various challenges on Instagram. Credit... via Zebra Iq In the past two weeks, Instagram has been overrun with viral challenges. On Tuesday, thousands of teenagers began posting unflattering photos of themselves to their feeds with the cryptic caption “until tomorrow.” Anyone who liked the photos, which are intended to only stay up for 24 hours, received a message from the user daring them to do the same. That might be because literally everyone is home right now — or should be! What else is there to do? In addition to “until tomorrow,” there is the new “draw something” challenge, where users draw an object using the creative tools on Instagram Stories, then tag five friends to do it, too. There is “see a dog, share a dog,” which encourages people to post photos of their pets. There are physical challenges, like the push-ups challenge, where a person posts a video of them doing 10 push-ups to Instagram Stories then tags 10 friends to do the same. Or the planking challenge, where users hold a plank for 15 seconds. And some celebrities have even tried to start their own. The country musician Tim McGraw posted the #deepcutschallenge on Sunday, imploring followers to play their favorite throwback song on guitar. Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez posted a “couples challenge” where they try to guess how the other would answer questions about their relationship. “These challenges all started when people began to stay home and go into quarantine,” said Taylor Loren, head of content marketing at Later, an Instagram marketing platform. “Instagram usage has risen a lot in the past couple weeks and these challenges are way for people to interact with their friends and stay entertained while they have to stay home.” Many of the most viral challenges in the past week have centered around relatable quarantine habits. There’s one where you take a shot, or drink a glass of wine then tag 10 friends to do the same. There’s the “post what you’re doing right now” challenge which seems, anecdotally, to have taken off among parents. (The challenge is simple: post exactly what you’re doing in the moment, then tag friends to do the same.) These challenges are “based around themes that everyone feels like they can relate to now in some way,” Ms. Loren said. Read more

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March 26, 2020, 7:30 p.m. ET March 26, 2020, 7:30 p.m. ET By An Israeli mom spoke for parents everywhere in a viral video. Parents, teachers and students across the U.S. are getting acclimated to the new normal. There are no school buses, or drop-offs, or walks to school. Instead, students are stumbling out of bed into their classrooms on Zoom and their parents are stumbling out of bed into work meetings on Zoom. Everyone is trying to stay focused. Or at least trying to keep it together. There are no more after-school activities, no more sports, and for many families, no more nannies or babysitters. There are no real breaks for anyone, and no escape either. After two days of this new reality, Shiri Kenigsberg Levi, a mother of four in southern Israel, needed to vent. She went to her car, hit record, and uploaded a video to a Facebook group. The 90-second diatribe has been translated into more than 20 languages, and has racked up millions of times. “Listen it’s not working, this distance-learning thing. Seriously, it’s impossible!” she begins, exasperated. “All day it’s, ‘How’s the child feeling?’ How’s the child feeling? He’s spending the entire day on his cellphone — he’s fine! Sleeping fine, eating fine — they won’t stop eating. How’s he feeling?! Ask me how I’m feeling! I’m falling to pieces!” Parents around the world responded quickly: “Same.” Read more

March 26, 2020, 7:15 p.m. ET March 26, 2020, 7:15 p.m. ET By The editor of New York magazine is providing hand sanitizer. A Walgreens at Union Square in New York was sold out of hand sanitizer and antibacterial cleaning products earlier this month. Credit... Sarah Blesener for The New York Times David Haskell, the editor of New York magazine, has been working to provide city residents with an increasingly rare commodity: hand sanitizer. In his spare time, Mr. Haskell helps run Kings County Distillery, a whiskey maker that he helped found in 2010. That’s how he got into germ-killing. “We started realizing we had the capacity to make hand sanitizer, and it seemed to be in short supply,” Mr. Haskell said. “We just said, ‘Let’s convert all the still capacity.’” The recipe blends high-proof alcohol, hydrogen peroxide and glycerine. Small flasks are available in exchange for donations at the distillery’s Brooklyn Navy Yard headquarters. The first batch of 1,000 bottles is gone. More batches are on the way. Image David Haskell, left, and Colin Spoelman, the founders of Kings County Distillery, in 2013. Credit... Karsten Moran for The New York Times The pandemic’s arrival in New York also affected Mr. Haskell’s day job. He had to tear up much of a planned issue to make way for stories on the newly prominent Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, Google Hangout birthday parties and the virus’s effects on daily life in the city. “It reminded me of producing the Hurricane Sandy issue,” Mr. Haskell said. “There was something thrilling about a lot of assignments going out at once.” Read more

March 26, 2020, 7:00 p.m. ET March 26, 2020, 7:00 p.m. ET By Hong Kong’s hot pot restaurants adapt to keep reaching customers. Bong Kwok and Jason Ho preparing a takeout order at their hot pot restaurant in Hong Kong. Credit... Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times As many American restaurants are limited to takeout and delivery services, some residents in Hong Kong have been avoiding banquet-style meals and hot pot — a traditional Chinese meal — after a large group contracted the virus after a dinner. “The hardest part is to restore people’s confidence,” a restaurant owner in the city said. HONG KONG — What began as a classic Lunar New Year celebration ended with nearly a dozen members of a family sickened and a city of seven million on edge. Nineteen members of an extended family gathered in January for hot pot — a traditional Chinese meal in which diners dip raw meat, seafood and vegetables into a shared caldron of simmering broth. By the end of the meal, 11 people had unwittingly contracted the new coronavirus, the largest single cluster of cases to date in Hong Kong. Reports about the family, later known in the local news media as the “hot pot clan,” alarmed many in this semiautonomous Chinese city, spurring restaurants to action and leading residents to avoid large banquet-style meals, as well as hot pot. As restaurants around the world close or retool in an effort to enforce social distancing, Hong Kong’s hot pot restaurants offer both a cautionary tale and some good advice about how to continue to serve customers amid a pandemic. Soon after the cases were confirmed, and just weeks after a lockdown was imposed in Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the epidemic started, the party venue where the family had eaten closed its doors for good. Other hot pot restaurants saw trade drop off rapidly. Spots famous for the dish pulled it from their menus. One restaurant, Suppa, said business was down as much as 96 percent after news of the family spread across the city. For two days, it had no customers at all. “The hardest part is to restore people’s confidence,” said Bong Kwok, 34, one of the restaurant’s founders, who opened Suppa in 2017. “This happened too fast.” For months last year, the restaurant’s Causeway Bay neighborhood was shrouded in tear gas as street battles raged between antigovernment protesters and riot police officers. After weeks of recording new cases in the single digits, Hong Kong is experiencing a resurgence in coronavirus cases, linked to travelers and overseas residents from Europe who returned to the city as the pandemic marched across the globe. The new wave of infections prompted the government on Monday to announce a ban on alcohol sales at bars and restaurants in an effort to encourage social distancing, dealing another blow to the industry. Mr. Kwok and Mr. Ho have been savvy about how to best continue to serve customers amid heightened tensions and changing rules. Their methods for coping could serve as a useful model for restaurateurs in other cities dealing with similar issues. Suppa, a homonym for “give it a blanch” in Cantonese, rolled out delivery services for the first time in February, a move welcomed by loyal patrons who wanted to enjoy hot pot away from the crowds. Those who choose to dine-in are met by an employee with a thermometer who checks their temperature at the door and asks about their travel history. Read more

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March 26, 2020, 6:30 p.m. ET March 26, 2020, 6:30 p.m. ET By Chicago closes its lakefront parks and beaches to deter crowds. “Our lakefront is our treasure. But congregating on our lakefront is unacceptable and could lead to death,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago said on Thursday. Credit... Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Chicago Sun-Times, via Associated Press Chicago officials on Thursday closed the city’s lakefront parks and beaches to the public, with the mayor expressing her dismay at the number of people who had flouted social distancing guidelines at popular recreation spots on the shores of Lake Michigan. “Our lakefront is our treasure,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago said at a news conference Thursday. “But congregating on our lakefront is unacceptable and could lead to death.” The entire state of Illinois is under a “stay at home” order, and as of Thursday there had been more than 1,800 coronavirus cases in the state, along with 21 deaths. The trail along Lake Michigan, an 18 1/2-mile stretch that is one of Chicago’s most popular sites for jogging, cycling or taking a walk, was officially closed at 8 a.m. Thursday. The decision also affected adjacent parks, beaches, fieldhouses, playlots, school playgrounds, the Chicago Riverwalk and the 606 Trail. “These steps were taken to further limit Covid-19 infections due to projection rates that if this stricter stay-in-place order did not occur, we would have upwards of 40,000 residents requiring a hospitalization,” James Cappleman, a city alderman, said. “This would decimate our health care system, leading to many deaths.” Chicago’s move follows similar decisions by leaders across the United States and around the world to close parks and beaches where crowds had gathered despite orders to limit public gatherings. On Tuesday, the National Park Service announced that the Yellowstone, Grand Teton and the Great Smoky Mountains parks would be closed immediately to prevent the spread of the virus. And Gov. Gavin Newsom of California on Monday ordered the closing of parking lots at many beaches and state parks after crowds were seen along the state’s coastline and in its mountain wilderness over the weekend. Read more

March 26, 2020, 6:15 p.m. ET March 26, 2020, 6:15 p.m. ET By A choir group had 60 people show up for practice. Now 45 are sick. Before social distancing requirements were in place in Washington State earlier this month, members of a choir group took their own coronavirus precautions. They told singers not to attend practice if they had even a hint of illness. Yet the virus has devastated the Skagit Valley Chorale, based in the rural valley north of Seattle that is famous for its tulip production. Of the 60 people who attended a March 10 practice, 45 have developed symptoms and 27 so far have tested positive, officials said. One of the group’s members has died, another has been hospitalized and others have struggled to overcome their illness. Polly Dubbel, the communicable disease and environmental health manager at Skagit County Public Health, said the case was a disturbing example of how contagious coronavirus can be and how it can spread among groups even when no one is symptomatic. “It’s really too high risk for people to gather close together,” Ms. Dubbel said. “This just really illustrates that.” Ruth Backlund, a co-president at the Skagit Valley Chorale, said the group was monitoring public health guidelines at the time of the practice and had asked people to stay home if they showed even minor signs of illness. The group gathered in rows facing a piano and a choir director. They were all in individual chairs and had space to keep separated. Ms. Backlund had made sure there were extra soap dispensers in the bathrooms for people to wash their hands. “Nobody was sick. Nobody touched anybody. Nobody shook hands. Nobody hugged everybody like you might do in a group. There was none of that,” Ms. Backlund said. Read more

March 26, 2020, 6:00 p.m. ET March 26, 2020, 6:00 p.m. ET By Mihir Zaveri and Looking for N95 masks? Check the burial vault. A group moving boxes of masks from the National Cathedral in Washington on Wednesday. Credit... Danielle E. Thomas/Agence France-Presse, via Washington National Cathedral Joe Alonso, the head stonemason at the Washington National Cathedral, had tended to the building for 35 years. He knew its nooks and crannies. So when news spread of a shortage of N95 masks needed to fight the coronavirus outbreak, Mr. Alonso remembered something nobody else did: More than 7,000 masks — purchased in 2005 or 2006 amid worries about an avian flu outbreak — were stashed away in an unfinished burial vault in the cathedral’s crypt. “Over the last month, you start hearing, ‘N95 masks, N95 masks,’” he said. “I was like, ‘Oh yeah, all those N95 masks in the burial vault.’” The cathedral donated 5,000 masks on Wednesday to two Washington hospitals to help doctors, nurses and others fight the coronavirus outbreak, part of a worldwide search that is turning up millions of desperately needed masks, sometimes in unusual places. On Thursday, a health care union called the S.E.I.U.-U.H.W. said it had found a whopping 39 million masks from a private company based in Pennsylvania that distributes medical supplies and pharmaceuticals. The masks were being sold for $5 each to groups like Kaiser Permanente and the Greater New York Hospital Association, the union said, adding that it had no financial interest at stake. Goldman Sachs, Nasdaq, Facebook and Apple are among the companies who have found or procured the masks. Read more

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March 26, 2020, 5:30 p.m. ET March 26, 2020, 5:30 p.m. ET By Milkmen in England embrace an influx of customers. Milk-delivery services have seen a surge of new customers in recent days as people have begun avoiding grocery stores. Credit... Mary Turner for The New York Times As Americans grapple with the challenges of shopping during a pandemic, people in England have increasingly turned back the clock, relying on milk delivery services to help get them through the pandemic. LEEDS, England — Suddenly, it seems, everyone wants a milkman. The surge has been going on for a week or so, Peter Critchley said. As the British government’s measures to slow the coronavirus’s spread have grown incrementally tighter, as towns and cities have fallen quiet, as shops have closed and communities — mostly — started to follow officials’ advice to stay at home, more and more people have turned to Mr. Critchley, and others like him. It is one less reason to venture outside, one way of avoiding snaking queues and empty shelves at supermarkets, at least one essential that can be guaranteed. “At the moment, it’s just about managing,” Mr. Critchley said. He has been running the business — I.W. Critchley & Son, in the northern city of Leeds — since he took over from his father, the founder, some 40 years ago. “It has been huge,” he said. “We have had people calling up to ask for jobs. Normally we’d just say no. Now we have to think, ‘Do we need someone else?’” The story is the same across the north of England. Almost all milk delivery services contacted by The Times have placed notices on their websites or added voice-mail messages warning prospective customers about the high level of demand; many have updated their Facebook pages to thank people for their patience. Robert Orton, a milkman in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, has seen such a spike in interest that, reluctantly, he is having to turn away prospective customers. “I can only take new people if they live on streets that I already go down,” he said. “Otherwise, I just can’t do it. It’s been mad.” For an industry that seemed, for a long time, to be edging toward irrelevance, it is a seismic shift. Until recently, milkmen were seen as something between a luxury and a vestige of a forgotten past: something people had fond memories of as children, but not really necessary in the modern world.Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, customers dwindled in the face of aggressive price reductions on milk by supermarkets, driving many milkmen out of business altogether. “I had countless conversations with people who told me I wouldn’t be delivering milk much longer,” Mr. Orton said. “Everyone could get their milk from the supermarket.” Read more

March 26, 2020, 5:00 p.m. ET March 26, 2020, 5:00 p.m. ET By An opinion essayist warns: Don’t expect Covid-19 to inspire great art. Video Credit Credit... By Klaas Verplancke It’s a common refrain when devastating things happen: Creativity will thrive in these conditions. I’ve seen it said in recent days as tours are canceled, TV and film production is postponed and creatives are forced into self-isolation because of the coronavirus. Just think of all the great songs and books and screenplays that will come out of this. There’s an expectation that, because artists are stuck at home, they will create amazing things. I understand wanting to find the silver lining in a terrible situation; it’s a natural coping mechanism. But it ignores how poorly designed our infrastructure is for supporting artists. I am a co-founder of a record label and Talkhouse, a media outlet for musicians, actors and filmmakers, and have worked with creative people in nearly every imaginable capacity for the past 15 years. The last few weeks have been a waking nightmare for all of us. I’ve lain in bed thinking about our community. Not once have I thought, “These artists are going to make some great stuff!”

March 26, 2020, 4:30 p.m. ET March 26, 2020, 4:30 p.m. ET By With meetings banned, millions struggle to stay sober on their own. Felanie Castro of Glide, a community outreach organization working with Project Dope in San Francisco, delivered harm reduction kits to people without housing in the Tenderloin District. Credit... Aaron Wojack for The New York Times For people who struggle with sobriety, for whom isolation is excruciating and group support essential, the ban on group gatherings to combat the spread of the coronavirus is especially difficult. Some addiction experts worry that the situation will soon lead to an increase in overdoses, reversing declines of recent years. The shock waves are hitting every strata of these communities, from people who rely on 12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, to those who go to clinics to receive doses of addiction treatment medication, to people living on the street who rely on community aid workers for clean syringes. “The disruptions that the pandemic is causing can really risk devastating the gains we’ve made in addressing the opioid epidemic,” said Dr. David Fiellin, an addiction medicine expert at the Yale School of Medicine. “For some patients, we worry about them going back to what is familiar — using is their coping strategy. For others, we worry about disruptions in ongoing access to their addiction treatment medications.” Treatment providers, support networks and even the federal government have begun to act. Last week, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration issued new regulations and guidelines. They will now allow clinics to dispense extended quantities of the addiction treatment medications methadone and buprenorphine to patients whom providers deem stable, so they will not have to visit clinics daily. Regulations now also permit some medical assessments to be done by phone. Organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous, which had online meetings and phone counseling available for years, are urging local chapters to use those tools immediately. New apps are helping people stay sober with meditations, peer support and counseling. Dr. Rona Huckabee, a therapist at Cleveland MetroHealth, has been checking in by phone with patients four times a week. So far, most are hanging in, but she fears for a woman who had only been in the program a week after struggling with heroin. “She says she is OK, but I know she’s not,” Dr. Huckabee said. Dr. Huckabee knows deeply that a half-hour telephone call is no substitute for a three-hour daily group session. Many of her patients are facing relatives who don’t understand what they’ve been through. They need the solace of the group. She repeatedly tells them, “I’m your No. 1 fan.” A week from now, she predicts, a few will simply show up at her office. But what about social distancing? Dr. Huckabee chose her words carefully. “I’m not telling them to come in, but I’m not telling them not to. They need that connection, to know someone cares,” she said. “So when they show up, we’ll wash our hands and we’ll sit down together,” she added. “And we’ll talk.” Read more

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March 26, 2020, 4:00 p.m. ET March 26, 2020, 4:00 p.m. ET By Ben Casselman, Patricia Cohen and Unemployment claims soar as ‘a large part of the economy just collapsed.’ A Los Angeles restaurant, Chi Spacca, offered meals and supplies to workers in the industry who have lost jobs or are struggling because of the coronavirus outbreak. Credit... Allison Zaucha for The New York Times More than three million people filed for unemployment benefits last week, sending a collective shudder throughout the economy that is unlike anything Americans have experienced. The report, released by the Labor Department today, provides some of the first hard data on the economic toll of the coronavirus pandemic, which has shut down whole swaths of American life faster than government statistics can keep track. The figure of nearly 3.3 million set a grim record. “A large part of the economy just collapsed,” said Ben Herzon, executive director of IHS Markit, a business data and analytics firm.



And the worst could be yet to come. Mr. Herzon said he expected a similarly large number next Thursday, when the Labor Department releases its report on new claims filed this week.



Yet as staggering as the figures are for jobless claims, they almost certainly understate the problem. Some part-time and low-wage workers don’t qualify for unemployment benefits. Nor do gig workers, independent contractors and the self-employed, although the emergency aid package passed by the Senate would broaden eligibility to include many of them. Others who do qualify may not know it. And the sudden rush of layoffs led to jammed phone lines and overwhelmed computer servers at unemployment offices across the country, leaving many people unable to file claims. The evening that Elise Quivey, 25, heard she was being furloughed from her job in Chicago as a web designer for a cruise ship company, she immediately clicked on the state’s unemployment benefits website. The pages wouldn’t load. The next morning, as she tried to fill out the online form, error messages kept flashing.



Days of calling have resulted in nagging busy signals. She is hoping that her claim made it through, and that she will receive aid within a few weeks, but she is not optimistic. “There’s so many things up in the air right now, and it’s so stressful,” she said. “It’s a wreck.” The terrifying speed of the economic collapse has spurred lawmakers to action. Late Wednesday night, Republican and Democratic senators agreed on a $2 trillion aid package that would provide cash payments to nearly all Americans and would expand the unemployment system, among other changes. The bill is expected to get final congressional approval on Friday. Read more

March 26, 2020, 3:30 p.m. ET March 26, 2020, 3:30 p.m. ET By The Indianapolis 500 will be held after May for the first time. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is the home to the Indianapolis 500, which has been rescheduled for Aug. 23. The event has never been raced outside of May. Credit... Rob Baker/Associated Press Joining the long list of sporting events postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Indianapolis 500 has been rescheduled for Sunday, Aug. 23. The race, which is held annually during Memorial Day weekend, was originally scheduled for May 24. In a statement, Roger Penske, owner of the powerful Penske Racing team, acknowledged that moving away from the race’s traditional month of May was difficult for organizers, but that the health of their fans was of paramount importance. “We will continue to focus on ways we can enhance the customer experience in the months ahead, and I’m confident we will welcome fans with a transformed facility and a global spectacle when we run the world’s greatest race,” the statement said. The race, which has been held since 1911, has been canceled outright six times because of war, but has never been held outside the month of May. In the interim, IndyCar will be holding a series of virtual races called IndyCar iRacing, with the first race scheduled for Saturday. Read more

March 26, 2020, 2:30 p.m. ET March 26, 2020, 2:30 p.m. ET By A Brooklyn hospital faces the challenges of fighting the virus. The hospital has seen more than 800 potential coronavirus cases in the past few weeks. Credit... Victor J. Blue for The New York Times The virus descended on the Brooklyn Hospital Center three weeks ago. Dr. Sylvie de Souza began writing down details of each potential case on a sheet of paper, a list that has grown to more than 800 patients, most of them seen in the walk-in tent. She and others at the hospital had prepared for the growing onslaught: canceling most surgeries to bring down the census, designating an X-ray room just for patients suspected of having the virus, searching for supplies, barring most visitors, redeploying nurses to new roles, opening a hotline for the community. The 175-year-old hospital — where Walt Whitman brought peaches and poems to comfort the Civil War wounded and where Anthony Fauci, the White House adviser who is now American’s most famous doctor, was born — is scaling up, as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has required all New York hospitals to do. The city, now the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States, had reported more than 20,000 confirmed infections and 280 deaths as of late Wednesday. Licensed to treat 464 patients, the Brooklyn medical center typically has only enough staff and beds to handle 250 to 300. It is planning to increase that number by half if needed, but it may have to double it. “I have so many different fears,” Dr. de Souza said on Wednesday. If the patient volume increases at the current pace, she is concerned the emergency room will be out of space by next week. If many patients are desperately ill and need life support, she worries about having to choose between them. Read more

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March 26, 2020, 2:00 p.m. ET March 26, 2020, 2:00 p.m. ET By For the Irish, restrictions have limited ‘implicit therapeutic rituals.’ A park in Dublin last week after Ireland urged people to distance themselves socially. Credit... Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters People hoping to hold funerals in the United States have been told they will have to wait in observance of the restrictions put in place to protect from the spread of the coronavirus. In Ireland, where the wake is a pervasive part of the culture, similar rules are causing a major disruption. Like so many rites in Irish life, death is a social event as much as it is a time of mourning. But new coronavirus restrictions mean that funeral rituals have to be rethought. Communities all over the world are grappling with the new normal in places where public life is coming to a halt. And at a time when the possibility of death pervades the public and private spheres to a degree largely unknown outside wartime, people are having to rethink how they bury their dead. The Irish wake, rooted in Roman Catholic tradition, has a certain formula to it — a routine built into the muscle memory of how a family, and a place, grieves. It’s a communal goodbye. But a ban on public gatherings and a call for social distancing has halted those traditions. Kevin Toolis, a writer who has spent much time reflecting on the Irish way of death, said the virus had put a stop to some of the “implicit therapeutic rituals” that come with mortality. “We are forgetting that people die very ordinary deaths — cancer, old age, traffic accidents, heart attacks,” he said, and their subsequent wakes were “this incredible sort of grief exercise.” When Carol Ryan’s mother Betty died last week of complications from cancer, the undertaker was clear: They were in “uncharted waters.”“There was definitely a lot of confusion,” Ms. Ryan said, “but also a lot of sadness and support for us.” And their community still managed to come together to send her off, albeit at an appropriate social distance. Read more