Southern Maryland home sales

Dr., Willett Lane, LUSBY AREA Big Bear Lane, Dancer Ct., Forest Glen Rd., Lake Terr., Minot Ct., Perch Ct., Thunderbird Dr., Winnebago Lane, NORTH BEACH AREA Sea Bass Ct., Ninth St., OWINGS AREA Hall Ct., Michael Way, PRINCE FREDERICK AREA Adderton Dr., Dares Wharf Rd., Oliver Dr., Sea Gull Beach Rd., Yardley Dr., SOLOMONS AREA Oyster Bay Pl., ST. LEONARD AREA Nostalgia Dr., SUNDERLAND AREA Federal Oak Dr., These sales data recorded by the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation in October were provided by Black Knight Inc. For information about other residential real estate transactions, visit washingtonpost.com/homesales. BRANDYWINE AREA Kayak Dr., BRYANS ROAD AREA Boxwood Cir., Gerard Ct., Thomas Rd., BRYANTOWN AREA Edelen Rd., COBB ISLAND AREA Neale Sound Dr., HUGHESVILLE-PRINCE FREDERICK ROAD AREA Clydesdale Pl., Latham Ct., INDIAN HEAD AREA Lookout Dr., ISSUE AREA Bar Harbor Ct., LA PLATA AREA Colebrook Dr., Glen Albin Rd., Kerrick Dr., Martin Ct., Redwood Cir., Wales Dr., MATTAWOMAN CREEK AREA Bridle Path Cir., Chamberlin Ct. W., Duckhorn Ct., Golden Gate Pl., Legation Pl., Meadowsweet Dr., Moran Dr., Pinefield Rd., Sagewood Ct., Silver Maple Dr., Twin Oak Dr., Westdale Ct., NANJEMOY AREA Riverside Ranch Pl., NEWBURG-ROCK POINT ROAD AREA Hawks Nest Pl., ST. CHARLES AREA Barrington Dr., Clark Ave., Hazeltine Ct., Montgomery Lane, Old Washington Rd., Peanuts Lane, Sunset Ridge Pl., University Dr., Wonderboy Pl., WALDORF (WEST) AREA Bluebird Dr., Cheetah Ct., Copperhead Ct., Drum Ct., Eutaw Forest Dr., Gopher Ct., Hummingbird Dr., Linden Grove Dr., Ocelot St., Pep Rally Lane, Sea Lion Pl., Sugarberry St., Tapir Pl., Witten Ct., WHITE PLAINS AREA Chesham Ct., Killington Ct., Saint Luke Dr., These sales data recorded by the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation in October were provided by Black Knight Inc. For information about other residential real estate transactions, visit washingtonpost.com/homesales. CALIFORNIA AREA Jasmine Way, Saint Andrews Church Rd., Swift Fox Dr., CALLAWAY AREA Mallard Pl., CHARLOTTE HALL AREA Indian Creek Dr., DRAYDEN AREA Hyatt Ct., GREAT MILLS AREA Coronado Dr., HOLLYWOOD AREA Pembrook Dr., LEONARDTOWN AREA Culpepper Way, Jenifer Ct., Lytle Lane, Medleys Neck Rd., Starlight Dr., LEXINGTON PARK AREA Bolden Ct., Defender St., Hilton Run Ct., Lucas Cove Lane, Oak Ct., Planters Ct., Woodland Ct., MECHANICSVILLE AREA Birch Manor Cir., Cox Dr., Jesse Dr., Livingston Dr., Prospect Hill Rd., Walnut Cir., PARK HALL AREA Point Lookout Rd., RIDGE AREA Airedele Rd., TALL TIMBERS AREA Second St., — Compiled by Lisa M. Bolton


A tiny army is fighting for 20 million lives. Can Mali’s military grow fast enough?

lives last year. Residents have accused Malian soldiers, meanwhile, of hurting and killing innocent people suspected of working with the militants, according to reports from Human Rights Watch. Leaders say reforms are underway, but they lack the money to fix every problem at once. “It is not enough to simply hire soldiers,” said Marc-André Boisvert, a Mali analyst in Washington focused on the army. “Trust needs to be built.” In Bamako, the capital, life continues in relative calm. Terrorist attacks over the years have rattled people, but the dearth of jobs seems more pressing, several city dwellers said. Careers in the military are highly sought after — “like when you have a beautiful daughter and all these boys circle the house,” said Col. Maj. Diarran Kone, the army’s spokesman. “We cannot possibly take everyone who is coming forward.” Interest in enlisting tends to fluctuate with the health of the economy in Mali, analysts say, as it does in the United States. Being in the military here is viewed as a source of steady income with a side of prestige. (The army declined to disclose its pay data.) Mali aims to add and train at least 10,000 soldiers in coming months, Kone said. Successful applicants, he added, are physically tough with clean criminal records. Securing a spot is “extremely” difficult, said Issa Fane, 25, who tried unsuccessfully two years ago. Now he’s studying history and hoping a college degree could boost his chances. “I either die in the army, or I die some other way,” he said. “Fighting for my country is my dream.” Kalifa Mounkoro, 32, a mechanic with a penchant for Superman shirts, is trying a different path: He’s saving up about $500 to buy a gun. People who belong to militias in the countryside can exchange their weapons for a Malian army uniform, he has heard, as part of the nation’s disarmament program. “I can make more money,” he said, “and protect the future for my children.” Eyeing a similar opportunity, Siga Camara, 31, joined a self-defense group that operates mostly in the north. Her primary role is guarding a Bamako guesthouse for leaders in town for meetings. She volunteers for eight-hour shifts, sitting outside the wooden double doors at night with an AK-47, stashing away tips to buy a firearm of her own. “It’s stability,” said the woman in camouflage, “and stability makes people respect you.” danielle.paquette@washpost.com


The CPAC question: Do you still think the media skewed coronavirus coverage?

feeling terrible,” he recalls. The symptoms persisted into Thursday, so the Finnegans went to the emergency room. “They were aware of the coronavirus thing, but they didn’t think the symptoms were enough that it was the coronavirus,” says Finnegan, whose wife also attended CPAC. On Saturday, the Finnegans received word through a mass email from the American Conservative Union that an attendee at the conference had tested positive for coronavirus. “The exposure occurred previous to the conference. A New Jersey hospital tested the person, and CDC confirmed the positive result,” reads the email, which goes on to say, “During this time, we need to remain calm, listen to our health care professionals, and support each other.” Listening to our health-care professionals, of course, is easiest when you can contact them. After reading the ACU email, the Finnegans called the emergency room with this additional information. They were told, however, that the emergency room didn’t do coronavirus testing — best to contact a doctor or the county health department. Finnegan says the couple couldn’t reach a doctor over the weekend, so they attempted to get someone from Contra Costa County on the line. By Monday evening, those attempts had failed. They finally got through to a doctor, though no luck there, either. They got word that the doctor was ill-equipped to handle a potential coronavirus patient with symptoms. “All of a sudden, she’s really sick, and there’s no one you can turn to to get tested,” says Finnegan, who adds that the state of California “really messed up on this.” The Erik Wemple Blog on Tuesday discussed the situation with Rohan Radhakrishna, deputy health officer at Contra Costa Health Services, the county health department. Last week, Radhakrishna says, the county tested 40 people per day, all in compliance with the screening guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The criteria are laid out here. “People who are two or three degrees removed from a possible unknown contact who don’t have all the required symptoms do not merit testing,” Radhakrishna says, though he notes that the testing situation changes every few days or so. The Finnegans, in other words, had moved straight from CPAC into the country’s coronavirus testing crunch. “Anybody who wants a test gets a test,” Trump said last Friday in one of his optimistic pronouncements about coronavirus. Realities in the actual U.S. health-care system are less utopian;


What coronavirus fears are doing to people with anxiety disorders

A traumatized veteran’s combat dreams are more vivid than they have been in years. A little girl can’t concentrate at school, terrified that her grandparents will get infected with coronavirus and die. A person who had stopped obsessively washing his hands regresses amid a barrage of public-service messages ordering him to do exactly that. For some of the millions of Americans with post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder or other forms of debilitating anxiety, coronavirus is a growing mental health threat. “It started as soon as the news that there was a new thing in the environment hit — a new virus,” said Shane G. Owens, a psychologist in Long Island, who specializes in treating anxiety. “They came in almost immediately feeling the false alarms of this and starting to see things in the environment that they saw as threatening.” The novel coronavirus and the scary-sounding respiratory disease it causes, covid-19, have alarmed all kinds of people. More than two-thirds of Americans were “somewhat” or “very” concerned about a U.S. epidemic, according to a recent Economist-YouGov poll. But for some of the estimated 19.1 percent of adults who have an anxiety disorder in a given year, understandable alarm can spin into a debilitating spiral. “This is definitely a trigger for a lot of patients,” said Krystal Lewis, a clinical psychologist at the National Institute of Mental Health who treats children as well as adults. “For anyone who might have OCD or specific concerns about getting sick, once you start seeing those signs pop up even more, and the Purell is everywhere, it can be really tough.” The stress of a new thing to worry about can exacerbate the symptoms of PTSD or trigger more frequent panic attacks in people who are prone to them. And it can be especially rough for the approximately 5 percent of adults annually who have illness anxiety disorder, formerly known as hypochondria, and are already predisposed to fear disease. “When people suffer with anxiety, it’s because they’re believing and focusing on the lies, distortions and exaggerations in their imagination,” said Ken Goodman, a therapist who treats anxiety disorders in California and a board member at the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. For instance, someone might perceive a few headaches and an eye twitch as a brain tumor. And the phenomenon can occur en masse as well, he said — helped along, according to everyone who


Be careful what you’re learning from those coronavirus maps

aspects of the situation and underplay others. Every map embodies an argument. Here is what you need to know about mapping coronavirus. Maps do more than present information Mapmaking has been transformed by Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software, which makes it very easy to create your own map of a phenomenon, with data and a little bit of technical ingenuity. However, mapmakers’ assumptions, biases or omissions may unintentionally become embedded in GIS-produced maps. This isn’t to say that all maps “lie,” but all maps emphasize certain things and leave others out — intentionally and unintentionally. Mapmaking choices have shaped the politics of issues such as the nation-state, colonialism and boundary negotiations. The complications involved in mapping coronavirus The Johns Hopkins and New York Times maps, and others like them, show how mapmakers’ choices can have unexpected consequences. The Johns Hopkins map illustrates the capabilities of GIS-based online mapping. The map shows cases by location; users can pan, zoom and bring up detailed data; and it contains extensive information about sources. As a proportional symbol map, it uses circles to represent the number of cases for each place: an enormous circle over Hubei province, large circles on South Korea, Iran and Italy, and so on. The New York Times maps are more static, but also encapsulate a lot of valuable information. However, the ways in which they present information has consequences. Obviously, the fact that they are maps — rather than lists, charts or graphs — emphasizes the importance of physical space, suggesting that the outbreak is spreading more to nearby countries than to distant places. Since the virus has moved via air travel, the implicit emphasis on proximity can be misleading (though other maps have added air travel information). By using a default basemap that just shows state boundaries and few geographic features, they do not capture important information about such things as whether the borders are open or closed. Their choices of color and centering also tell political stories. Many (but not all) coronavirus maps use shades of red and orange, colors associated with danger in many cultures. This encourages fear even as most official statements are urging calm. Mapmakers often wish to place their own location near the center and at the top, but in the case of coronavirus, the Chinese government is unlikely to be happy with how many maps default to centering on China. The Johns


The Technology 202: New polling shows most Americans are concerned about Big Tech’s power

Readers: We’re continuing to track the many ways the coronavirus is impacting the tech industry in the newsletter. With Tonya Riley Most Americans believe that Big Tech has too much power, according to new polling released this morning. The fresh data from Gallup and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation underscores how public opinion is shifting about Silicon Valley. Growing concerns that misinformation and other issues on social media are tempering the optimism many Americans once had about the industry. Here some of the survey’s key findings: — Americans think Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple have too much power: 77 percent of respondents share this sentiment, across all demographic and political groups. But they’re split on what to do about it: 50 percent favor breaking the companies up, while 49 percent oppose government intervention. — Their top concern is misinformation spreading online: 74 percent of Americans are very concerned about the spread of misinformation on the Internet. There’s a partisan gap: majorities of both Democrats (84 percent) and Republicans (65 percent) are very concerned about this issue, but Democrats are more concerned about the issue. — Americans don’t have faith social media companies can fix the problem: They don’t trust social media companies much (44 percent) or at all (40 percent) to make the right decisions about what content should or should not be allowed on online platforms. — But Americans don't think government is up to the task either: 59 percent of Americans believe elected officials and political candidates are paying “too little” attention to issues dealing with technology and technology companies. They would still prefer the companies (55 percent) to make those decisions about what content should be allowed online rather than the government (44 percent). The polling helps explain why proposals to regulate Big Tech have become a popular talking point among politicians on both sides of the aisle. But it also illustrates why it's been so difficult for lawmakers to actually pass meaningful privacy, antitrust or election transparency legislation. There's broad consensus there's a problem, but little agreement about how to solve it. “The techlash is real,” said Sam Gill, senior vice president and chief program officer at Knight Foundation. “People are concerned about major tech companies and their effects on democracy. But they are deeply divided on what should be done.” That creates a challenge for those seeking to campaign on tech issues


The locker room is where journalists build trust with athletes. Coronavirus just closed it.

teams to control. Players and reporters will also be asked to keep six to eight feet between them, a modest attempt at “social distancing" that earned some ridicule on Tuesday, as government officials grew more frustrated with sports leagues’ hesitance to postpone games or keep fans out of arenas. “I found it quite curious that the four major organizations ... put out guidelines to protect their athletes but not their fans,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said at a news conference. Jennifer Giglio, chief communications officer for the Washington Nationals, said she had been in touch with reporters covering the team, urging them to request interviews through the PR staff, which would coordinate conversations with players somewhere other than the clubhouse. “The message from Major League Baseball is not to take away access,” she said. “It was that we need to find ways to make sure the access reporters are getting continues.” Locker room access is unique to American sports journalism; soccer writers in the United Kingdom, for example, have far less interaction with players. And even before the new policy, that access was waning, Sullivan said. He used to be able to approach players at the batting cage, he said, but that practice is mostly frowned upon by teams now, if not explicitly forbidden. He also used to be able to return to the clubhouse after batting practice, but that’s no longer allowed. It affects the coverage, writers said. “Access enables both players and journalists to start to get to know each other as human beings,” said Josh Robbins, a writer for the Athletic and the president of the Professional Basketball Writers Association. “That empathy carries over into the journalism we produce. It is critical to helping journalists portray athletes as they are, which is human beings. That basic humanity benefits everybody — especially readers and players. “It also makes us more accountable to the players," he added. "We have to face them.” Both the NBA and NHL writers’ associations have been promised by the leagues that the restrictions are temporary and will be lifted after the health scare abates. Major League Baseball released a statement that described all clubhouse restrictions as temporary. “A lot of writers I’ve talked to are concerned,” Sullivan said. “I really do believe MLB wants this to be short-term. It’s in their best interest for it not to be a long-term thing. But who knows?”


Schools close, National Guard deployed to help New York suburb stem spread of coronavirus

more in California and one in South Dakota. “As a nation, we can’t be doing the kind of things we were doing a few months ago,” Fauci said. “It doesn’t matter whether you are in a state that has no infections or one infection. . . . If you don’t have a case, cases will come.” In Italy, people appeared to be heeding the orders of a nationwide lockdown as the country saw its highest single-day increase in deaths related to the virus, bringing the total there to 631. More European countries tightened their borders, with some effectively barring Italians from entering. Austria, Poland and the Czech Republic have banned large gatherings, while Dubai has closed its port to cruise ships. In Iran, officials struggled to contain one of the world’s biggest outbreaks, with more than 8,000 confirmed cases, including among at least two dozen lawmakers. Chinese President Xi Jinping went on a victory lap in Wuhan, the epicenter of the global outbreak, as the number of new infections there plummeted, perhaps offering hope that the spread in other parts of the world could follow a similar trend given time. But Jeanne Marrazzo, director of infectious diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine, said it remains to be seen whether the number of cases in China continues to decline. Worldwide, she said, the outbreak is concerning. “I think it’s going to get worse,” she said. In Washington state, which has the second-highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the United States, officials in Seattle and King County announced 74 new cases and two additional deaths Tuesday. There have been a total of 190 cases of covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, in the county and 22 deaths — 19 of them among residents of a single nursing home, where elderly and infirm residents fell victim to the virus. Thus far, more than 70 percent of the coronavirus-related deaths in the United States have been linked to the Life Care Center in Kirkland, Wash. Marrazzo said the containment zone in New Rochelle is a “new concept” that aims to mitigate the spread of the virus — which already is circulating in the community — but does not prohibit people from moving about. It is a form of social distancing, she said, that keeps people away from one another but also has some permissiveness. “I think


Coronavirus may have a seasonal cycle, but that doesn’t mean it will go away this summer, experts warn

As cases of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, rapidly increase in the United States and other parts of the world, epidemiologists and other researchers are urgently trying to learn more about the pathogen involved. One question that some virus specialists, and some meteorologists, are asking is whether there may be a seasonal aspect to this outbreak. In other words, is this more like the flu, which has a distinct winter peak in the United States and Europe and then ebbs for the spring and summer? Or is this here to stay at a high level of spread throughout the warm season? A new study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, shows that the novel coronavirus has been spreading most readily along an east-west band of the globe where the average temperatures are between 41 and 52 degrees and average humidity levels are between about 50 and 80 percent. The study, by researchers at the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine and in the Middle East, hypothesizes that the most at-risk cities in the coming weeks could lie just north of the region that has been most heavily affected to date as milder temperatures gradually move north. However, that assumes that the correlation with weather does in fact reveal something fundamental about the new coronavirus’s transmission, which is highly uncertain. “Although the current correlations with latitude and temperature seem strong, a direct causation has not been proven and predictions in the near-term are speculative and have to be considered with extreme caution,” the paper states. Mohammad Sajadi, a study co-author and a professor at the University of Maryland’s Institute of Human Virology, said the hypothesis that this virus exhibits a seasonality is based in part on the behavior of other respiratory viruses in temperate climates, as well as the lack of major covid-19 outbreaks in countries south of China, where travel patterns suggested the potential for large-scale spread. “Any time you’re dealing with a transmission event, there can be many potential variables, but sometimes one or [a] few variables are key,” Sajadi said via email. “We hypothesize that average temperature is one of them. The main takeaway from the study, and the reason we are disclosing it early, is that, if validated by the scientific community, it would be potentially useful in ongoing surveillance efforts.” Judging by how the virus may have responded to temperatures so far, the


maximum temperatures above 68 degrees. Sorkin cautioned that growth rates, however, were probably influenced by multiple factors, not just temperature, including importation of cases from infected countries, public health policies and infrastructure. Epidemiologists warn that so little is known about this coronavirus that it’s impossible to predict the course of the epidemic on the basis of weather or climate factors alone, and in fact, available evidence suggests that the virus can spread easily in warmer climates, such as Singapore’s. David Heymann, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said there are two main reasons the coronavirus could exhibit some seasonality. One has more to do with human behavior, because people tend not to be in confined spaces for extended periods during the summer. This could somewhat hinder the spread of the virus. The other reason, which is more of an unknown right now, has to do with the virus itself, specifically its transmissibility in different seasons. “No one knows” the transmission characteristics of this virus, Heymann said in an interview. “Certainly out here in Singapore, it transmits without any problem.” Singapore has had active community spread of the virus, but the government implemented policies including social distancing to stem the outbreak, with apparent success. Heymann said no one has yet shown a seasonality to the coronavirus that is due to characteristics of the virus itself. Studies have shown that the common flu virus has a seasonal aspect in the northern mid-latitudes, tied to humidity levels and temperature, among a number of variables. However, Heymann said that does not mean the spread of the novel coronavirus also will decline by early summer. “The one thing that’s clear is that this, at present, is not showing the same characteristics of influenza,” he said. In general, however, Heymann said, respiratory infections do tend to decline in the summer, but that there has not been a proven seasonality involved with two other major coronaviruses: SARS and MERS. In a preprint of a study published on the medRxiv website that is pending peer review, a group of researchers, including the epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch of Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, examined the coronavirus outbreak when it was mostly limited to China. They found that it exhibited the potential for sustained transmission and exponential growth rates across a range of temperature and humidity levels in China, from tropical areas to cold


See what working from home has done to San Francisco

local agencies such as the Public Library were limiting activities, public pools were closing and officials were taking measures to slow the spread of the illness. The government was expected to make a sweeping announcement Wednesday, while the Associated Press reported that the governor was expected to ban public gatherings above 250 people. The uneven spread of coronavirus has resulted in varied measures to contain it, including encouraging social distancing to limit human contact, school and office closures and large group gathering limitations. New Rochelle, N.Y., on Tuesday was the first U.S. city to quarantine a geographic containment zone of about a mile in an effort to limit the spread of the disease. The U.S. West Coast is slowly following in the footsteps of other global hubs, as covid-19 has spread to infect over 100,000 worldwide, prompting more than 4,000 deaths. The Chinese government took drastic steps to limit movement in the epicenter, Wuhan, while the Italian government recently implemented a similar travel and movement ban for its citizens. The first reported case of community spread in the country occurred in Solano County near Sacramento in mid-February. Travis Air Force Base hosted quarantined U.S. citizens from a cruise ship and China. It’s still unclear how a resident who did not have contact with family or friends who traveled to the affected regions came down with the virus. Just days later, another such case was reported in Santa Clara County, preceding some of the country’s first school closures. But the work-from-home orders, which Twitter was the first to implement last week, changed the rhythm of life here. The trains run by Caltrain that take people back and forth between Silicon Valley and San Francisco, were noticeably lighter on Monday and Tuesday, with unfilled seats during rush hour on what are usually standing-room-only commutes. “Our on-board staff are observing fewer people traveling on our trains during peak commutes,” said Alex Eisenhart, spokesperson for Caltrain. The San Francisco Bay Ferry’s passengers dropped 20 percent Monday, compared with a week ago. BART reported that Monday ridership dropped by 25 percent compared with a Monday last month. Meanwhile, Inrix, a traffic monitoring firm, said San Francisco’s road traffic began to drop last week and Google Maps showed green roads throughout the area even edging into rush hour. Morning Dumbarton Bridge traffic to Silicon Valley also dropped nearly 20 percent week over week, according to the


The best hope for coronavirus treatment is an experimental drug that fizzled against Ebola

can fight emerging infectious threats. As the outbreak spreads worldwide, a vaccine to prevent infection remains at least a year away. Meanwhile, there is no approved treatment to stop the virus once someone is infected, and the severe and sometimes fatal respiratory distress that afflicts a minority of patients. The hope is that remdesivir will show better results with the coronavirus than it did with Ebola, which is from a different viral family, officials said. The first trial results could be available in April. Gilead, the National Institutes of Health and Chinese health authorities are racing to test it on hundreds of people in controlled clinical trials, including a patient who was quarantined in Nebraska after being removed from the Diamond Princess cruise ship. Axios reported this month that Gilead acted so quickly that it did not even wait for required approval by the Food and Drug Administration before it shipped doses to China. Asked to respond, Gilead said it thinks its “limited shipments’’ were made in compliance with U.S. law. “I just hope remdesivir works, because we really need a therapeutic that can intervene in this crisis,’’ said Richard Whitley, director of an NIH-funded research effort involving the world’s most dangerous viruses. Gilead did not respond directly about the drug’s failure in the Ebola trial. “Covid-19 is a coronavirus that is unrelated to Ebola virus,’’ the company said. “Covid-19 is associated with different symptoms, pathology, and a different course of disease.’’ Invented by Gilead about a decade ago, remdesivir has been proven to stop certain viruses from replicating in lab experiments and in animals. It has been researched in academic labs in North Carolina and Tennessee with backing from federal taxpayers since 2014, as part of a $37.5 million effort by NIH to find treatments for infectious diseases. Until Monday, when it fell in a brutal market rout, Gilead’s stock price had defied the overall market decline of recent weeks, rising almost 20 percent from Feb. 21 to March 6, on hopes that the drug could provide the first treatment for covid-19. The lack of treatment helps explain why. The stock price increased 5 percent on Feb. 24 alone when a top official of the World Health Organization pinned much of the world’s hopes for a treatment on the drug. “There is only one drug right now that we think may have real efficacy, and that’s remdesivir,” said Bruce


Aylward, WHO’s assistant director general. Ten days later, RBC Capital Markets gave it only a 50 percent chance of succeeding as a treatment. The mixed signals have done little to dampen interest. There have been desperate pleas for supplies to treat patients on a “compassionate use’’ basis. Although Gilead leads the pack on treatments, large drug companies such as Merck, Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi, as well as lesser-known companies Regeneron and Moderna, are pursuing coronavirus vaccines and medications, and executives estimate that at least 40 small biotech companies are developing drugs to fight it. Every time there is a new virus, “we get started, but we don’t cross the finish line,’’ Julie Gerberding, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who is now the executive vice president and chief patient officer at Merck, said at a news briefing in Washington last week. This time, she said, industry is committed to pushing a vaccine to cross the line for regulatory approval. “If we don’t cross it, it will be because it’s scientifically hard,’’ she said, “not because of the will or the investment.’’ But drug companies also have been accused of not pursuing vaccines and antiviral treatments aggressively because the commercial markets for such drugs are weak. The potential patient pool for clinical trials dries up once a new infectious outbreak subsides, so investment can be frozen in partly completed projects. And the pool of medical customers for a drug can be short-lived, if a seasonal epidemic quickly disappears, offering little chance to recoup an investment of what could be hundreds of millions of dollars. Vaccine and treatment development tailed off after outbreaks of the earlier coronavirus cousins, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). The drug industry’s lobbying arm, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), said that at least half of its members have mobilized in various ways to fight the new coronavirus in recent weeks. “We need to encourage as many shots on goal as possible,’’ Stephen J. Ubl, PhRMA’s chief executive officer, told reporters. Government efforts to spur development have produced sporadic progress. In the nearly 20 years since the SARS outbreak, the National Institutes of Health has spent nearly $700 million on research and development efforts around coronavirus, according to a survey by the advocacy group Public Citizen, which criticized the pharmaceutical industry for a “lack


China is also relying on propaganda to tackle the covid-19 crisis

General Secretary Xi Jinping this week made his first visit to Wuhan since the covid-19 outbreak upended all corners of Chinese society. Xi’s trip was designed to reassure the public that their government has the virus contained — and things will get back to normal. But China’s propaganda apparatus has been in high gear since January. What is the official playbook, and has the propaganda been effective? Studies show modern authoritarian governments increasingly turn to information manipulation, rather than relying on ideological indoctrination or physical repression to maintain rule. They do this to generate an image of competence and increase public support. One useful tactic is to associate good news with the government and shift blame for bad news. Consistent with this perspective, China’s propaganda efforts focused on the decisive measures to control the epidemic. A few commercially oriented outlets like Caixin published investigative pieces, but official media such as the China Central Television, People’s Daily and their social media accounts have been blanketing the country with features about the Communist Party leadership’s efforts commanding the “people’s war” against the virus. Other propaganda focused on new policies and regulations and allocation of resources, the steady improvement of the situation across the country and the advantages of China’s political system in dealing with crises like this. Here’s what Chinese official media did not cover: whether China’s authoritarian system induced officials to prioritize social order and pleasing higher-ups over openly confronting an inconvenient disease; how the early warning system failed to alert Beijing health authorities; the role of the top leadership in the initial delays in responding; and how the lack of free flow of information, including the silencing of doctors like Li Wenliang, contributed to the spread of the virus. China’s state media treats the epidemic as a purely natural disaster, but how the government deals with a disaster can reveal its quality. News outlets and the Internet are also flooded with stories about the heroism and sacrifices of front line doctors and nurses, volunteers and delivery couriers, to “showcase the unity of the Chinese people.” The heroism is real, but inundating the public with these stories 24/7 also helped shift people’s attention away from questions about government accountability. In a touching speech about the coronavirus outbreak, a high school teacher asked students “not to replace questioning with praises,” and “not to regard winter as the beginning of spring.” But that


How to get into 5 of D.C.’s buzziest restaurants — and where to go if you strike out

Name-dropping the owner of a buzzy restaurant will not help you get a table at 8:30 p.m. on a Saturday night (unless you actually do know the owner, of course). But are there any legitimate ways to increase your chances of getting into a hot spot? We spoke with owners and general managers of some of D.C.’s buzziest restaurants to find out. “There really is no secret or shortcut,” says Joe Quinn, general manager of the perpetually packed Red Hen in Bloomingdale. “If you want a good chance at getting a table [on the] night of, especially on a busy night, you need to show up early.” Other suggestions were a bit more unexpected. At Kith/Kin, home base for star chef Kwame Onwuachi, Capital One credit cardholders can get access to tables at prime times via OpenTable, for instance. Daikaya Group partner Daisuke Utagawa says that managers at his restaurants talk to each other and could help a regular at ramen shop Hatoba snag a Friday night table at the recently opened Japanese Italian pizzeria Tonari, for example. “We like regulars,” Utagawa says. “We would like to help supporters as much as possible.” Here are some specific tips on how to get into five of D.C.’s newest, hottest restaurants — whether you’re planning far ahead or not — plus good, nearby alternatives in case you face a dreaded three-hour wait list and need to bail. 1805 18th St. NW. Open daily. anjurestaurant.com. After heaps of critical acclaim — including a three-star rating from The Washington Post’s Tom Sietsema and the top spot in Washingtonian’s annual list of the 100 best restaurants — diners sometimes start lining up early on weekends to get into Anju in Dupont. “It’s a little crazy all the time now,” general manager Eric Chodkowski says. “The reservations have been filling up 30 days in advance.” But to stay true to the casual, Korean pub-inspired theme, reservations are for the dining room upstairs while everything downstairs in the bar area is first come, first served. That includes a 10-seat bar, six window seats, four chef’s counter seats, and two communal tables. Chodkowski recommends getting in line 10 to 30 minutes before the restaurant opens at 5 p.m. to snag one of those bar seats (bonus: there’s a standout daily happy hour menu). Alternatively, arrive 30 to 45 minutes before the main kitchen closes (11 p.m. on Friday


Spring outbreak: Universities issue strict warnings as coronavirus spreads

14-day self-isolation,” before returning to campus, the university warned in a message to campus. The most challenging element is how to advise students about travel within the United States, said Sarah Van Orman, chief health officer with USC Student Health. “It’s very complicated,” Van Orman said. There are no public health guidelines about domestic travel, with the situation changing so rapidly. USC officials sent a message to students recently advising them to look at the local situation and carefully consider any domestic travel. Colleges are in an unusual position, said Van Orman. There’s clearly a higher risk of infections spreading in a communal living situation and in classrooms. But unlike K-12 schools that might shut down to minimize the chance of transmission of infections, “for a university, the idea of everyone leaving campus and coming back is, unfortunately, a risky situation.” More than 60,000 students are enrolled at OSU’s main campus in Columbus, Ohio. “These students come from every nook and cranny on the planet Earth,” Holt said. “Even if a handful of people contracted the virus, we’ve basically made a petri dish for the virus. And then we spread it when the semester ends in about six weeks, all over the world.” Sweeping changes to campus life will hit the most vulnerable students the hardest. Those who rely on meal plans, cannot access the Internet at home or can’t afford to travel have a few days to prepare for a future that seemed far-fetched a mere month ago. Morgan McDonald, an OSU student who relies on academic assistance, said she does not know how she will access those services from home. She has an anxiety disorder and needs extra time for quizzes and tests. “If that can’t happen, then that causes me more anxiety,” McDonald said. Schools are responding in a variety of ways, said Brad Farnsworth, vice president for global engagement with the American Council on Education. One way: Some residential campuses are ensuring that students who don’t feel safe traveling, particularly international students, can remain on campus with food and housing. For now, a routine part of the academic calendar suddenly poses a multitude of challenges. Some schools have updated their advice multiple times in recent weeks. The rapidly changing situation has sent schools scrambling. “I thought, at some point, I’d teach a class online,” Holt said. “I just didn’t think it would be next week.” lauren.lumpkin@washpost.com


WHO declares a pandemic of coronavirus disease covid-19

The World Health Organization on Wednesday declared coronavirus a pandemic, reflecting alarm that countries aren’t working quickly and aggressively enough to fight the disease it causes, covid-19. “We are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction,” said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. For weeks now, the WHO has hesitated to make the pandemic declaration, for fear of inciting panic or prompting some countries to flag in their efforts, even though many epidemiologists believed the coronavirus had already spread to pandemic levels. But on Wednesday, Tedros noted the widespread scale of the outbreak. “There are now more than 118,000 cases in 114 countries, and 4,291 people have lost their lives,” he said. “In the days and weeks ahead, we expect to see the number of coronavirus cases, the number of deaths and the number of affected countries climb even higher." Tedros cautioned that “‘pandemic’ is not a word to use lightly or carelessly. It is a word that, if misused, can cause unreasonable fear, or unjustified acceptance that the fight is over, leading to unnecessary suffering and death.” The WHO’s announcement does not trigger any new funding, protocols or regulations. But it is an acknowledgement of the disease spreading across several continents. What is a pandemic, and who gets to define it? Disease experts use the term “pandemic” to describe when an epidemic has become rampant in multiple countries and continents simultaneously. (The term comes from the Greek word “pan,” meaning “all,” and “demos,” meaning “people.”) While the word may evoke fear, it describes how widespread an outbreak may be, not its deadliness. “I think one of the things people misunderstand when it comes to pandemics is it’s not about how severe it is or how many cases there are or even how worried we need to be. It’s about literal geography,” said Caitlin Rivers, epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. The WHO — the global body with authority to officially declare a pandemic — defines pandemic loosely as “the worldwide spread of a new disease.” The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines it this way: “Pandemic refers to an epidemic that has spread over several countries or continents, usually affecting a large number of people.” Why did the WHO finally say the p-word after resisting so long? WHO officials on Wednesday seemed to


isolation of the sick, social distancing and mobilization of the public to sanitize and prevent transmission. “Some countries are struggling with a lack of capacity,” Tedros said. “Some countries are struggling with a lack of resources. Some countries are struggling with a lack of resolve.” They also expressed worries that if stronger actions are not taken, the outbreak could spread to countries weak health systems, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa, which could lead to an explosion of cases and deaths. Does it mean countries should change how they’re fighting the virus? In the past, health experts have used a pandemic declaration as a signal that efforts to contain an outbreak from spreading have failed and that countries should focus their efforts more on mitigating its effects through actions such as getting hospitals ready to handle an influx of patients, stockpiling materials and enacting social distancing policies. This outbreak has behaved differently, however, and the WHO has stressed in recent weeks that all countries should focus on containment even as they begin ramping up efforts to mitigate. By working to contain the virus, countries can slow down the spread of the disease and buy time to work more on mitigation strategies. “It would be a mistake to abandon the containment strategy,” Tedros said. “We have never before seen a pandemic sparked by a coronavirus. And we have never before seen a pandemic that can be controlled at the same time.” When is the last time the WHO declared a pandemic? The last time the WHO declared a pandemic was during the 2009 H1N1 swine flu, and it triggered aggressive actions, such as millions in spending to buy vaccines. But H1N1 turned out not to be as deadly and disruptive as feared, and a lot of governments were frustrated about buying vaccines that they ended up not using and harshly criticized the WHO for its declaration. Burned by that response, the WHO got rid of the six-stage procedure that led up to it declaring an influenza pandemic. “Each time they went up a stage, it raised alarm. When they finally reached pandemic stage it caused enormous panic,” said Lawrence Gostin, a global health law professor at Georgetown University. “It was so dysfunctional and caused so much fear and panic that WHO abandoned that approach.” The WHO’s current approach has been much more vague, essentially leaving it up to leaders to declare


Scrutiny intensifies on NCAA tournament coronavirus plan, as two leagues keep out fans

The NCAA faced mounting pressure over how it will conduct its marquee event Tuesday as the Ivy League canceled its conference basketball tournaments and two other Division I conferences announced their tournaments would be played without spectators because of escalating concerns about the coronavirus. The NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments are scheduled to begin next week at more than two dozen sites around the country, including multiple venues in Ohio, where Gov. Mike DeWine (R) issued a strong recommendation Tuesday to play indoor sporting events in nearly empty arenas. The NCAA remained noncommittal in how it will proceed. “The NCAA continues to assess how covid-19 impacts the conduct of our tournaments and events,” the organization said in a statement. “We are consulting with public health officials and our covid-19 advisory panel, who are leading experts in epidemiology and public health, and will make decisions in the coming days.” As coronavirus concerns have shut down college campuses, canceled political rallies and led to the National Guard entering New Rochelle, N.Y., scrutiny is intensifying on the NCAA as it prepares to host large-scale gatherings across the country. The pace of the coronavirus’s spread and statements by public officials further raised the specter of one of America’s most popular sporting events unfolding in front of television audiences only, with squeaking sneakers and bouncing balls providing an echoing, eerie soundtrack. The Mid-American Conference and the Big West announced minutes apart Tuesday that they would hold their tournaments — in Cleveland and Anaheim, Calif., respectively — without spectators. The MAC followed the recommendation of DeWine, who asked for no spectators at indoor sporting events “other than the athletes, parents, and others essential to the game.” “The safety of all is our greatest concern,” MAC Commissioner Jon Steinbrecher said. Amid concerns elsewhere, the ACC began its conference tournament in Greensboro, N.C., as scheduled Tuesday, closing locker rooms to media and other visitors but allowing in a crowd. The Big 12 and the Big Ten announced their men’s tournaments, scheduled to begin Wednesday in Kansas City, Mo., and Indianapolis, respectively, would go on without interruption aside from closing locker rooms. The Big Ten’s decision stood in contrast to the measures taken by Indiana University, located about 50 miles away in Bloomington, which announced students would take classes remotely for two weeks after next week’s spring break. The NCAA men’s tournament is scheduled to begin March 17


South Korea shows that democracies can succeed against the coronavirus

Some commentators are arguing that China’s coronavirus response attests to the superiority of its authoritarian brand of governance and crisis management. In reality, it turns out that democracies are better suited to protect public health — at least, when they take advantage of their inherent strengths. One country is showing how it’s done: South Korea. “The advantages of the Chinese system have once again been demonstrated,” the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship paper said in a recent commentary — one that was approvingly quoted in the Wall Street Journal: “China’s battle against the epidemic showed that the CPC, as China’s ruling party, is by far the political party with the strongest governance capability in human history.” There are two obvious problems with this premise. First, taking Beijing’s word that it has succeeded in containing the outbreak requires a gigantic leap of faith. And second, praising China’s response as a victory means ignoring months of denial, coverups and missteps — all of which played a major role in allowing the virus to spread to the rest of the world. Some democracies are clearly not handling their responses well. Italy has now imposed a series of broad restrictions on movement that seem to have inspired more public panic than confidence. In the United States, President Trump has been criticized for repeatedly playing down the danger and trying to artificially keep the numbers of confirmed cases low for his own political benefit. Yet those are faults of those governments, not of the open society model writ large. In South Korea, the authorities are reporting a steady downtick in confirmed coronavirus cases over the past week after a series of decisive actions. These measures focus on education, transparency and mobilizing civil society — without resorting to Beijing’s tactics of forcing millions into home detention, using minorities as slave factory labor or disappearing anyone who dares criticize the government’s actions. South Korea’s most effective weapon against the virus has been to rapidly expand testing. It is are now testing 15,000 people a day, according to government figures; 210,000 South Koreans have been tested since Jan. 3, compared to about 6,500 tests completed in the United States by Tuesday morning. South Korea’s testing, of course, caused a spike in confirmed cases, which number 7,513 as of Tuesday. But they report only 54 deaths, a mortality rate of 0.71 percent. The number of daily confirmed cases has been


The NCAA is preparing for the coronavirus, and it’s complicated

In his new role, Carlos del Rio will be part of a team advising the NCAA on how it should — or, in the worst case, shouldn’t — proceed in holding one of America’s most popular sporting events amid the spread of the coronavirus. The disease has placed sports leagues and teams in uncharted, uncertain territory, trying to make decisions in the face of an illness that has confounded health experts. “We’re kind of building the ship as we’re sailing it,” del Rio said. On Tuesday, the NCAA announced it formed the six-member coronavirus advisory panel that includes del Rio, a global health department chair at Emory University, along with experts as disparate as Vivek H. Murthy, a former U.S. surgeon general, and Mike Rodriguez, a former New York cop who serves as the head of security for the U.S. Tennis Association and the U.S. Open. The coronavirus has caused leagues and teams to scramble. Small Division I basketball programs Chicago State and Missouri Kansas City pulled out of games at Seattle University, near the epicenter of the worst coronavirus spread in the United States; they are believed to be the country’s first sporting events canceled as a result of coronavirus. Late Thursday night, Johns Hopkins announced it would not allow fans into NCAA Division III first-and second-round men’s basketball games it is hosting this weekend. One of the teams at the Hopkins site is Yeshiva University, which is at the center of an outbreak in New York. Also on Thursday, Stanford announced it would limit public attendance at on-campus sporting events to approximately one-third of each venue’s capacity through April 15. The university’s women’s basketball team, which is ranked seventh nationally, is expected to be named a host for first- and second-round NCAA tournament games later this month as one of the top 16 seeds. In a news release, Stanford said it would continue to provide further updates on those games as it becomes available. The release also specified that attendance limits at Maples Pavillion would be 2,345 for basketball. The arena is also hosting the Pac-12 wrestling championships this weekend, but the university said it would allow seating for all fans who had already purchased tickets. The NHL barred league employees from traveling outside North America. MLB created a “working group” to address concerns and, like the NBA, advised players against signing autographs. The NCAA might face the


Amid all the pandemic fear, some impressive leaps in science

IMPRESSIVE NEW developments in science are showing up amid all the fear, errors and unknowns that have come with the coronavirus pandemic. Never before in history have disease sleuths found and shared so much information so quickly about a dangerous pathogen. Advanced genomics has allowed them to fingerprint the culprit, track it, diagnose it and begin to plot countermeasures. A boom in open publication has allowed them to trade data at network speed. In the long run, these developments will make the world safer. The outbreak has produced its share of dubious distinctions, from China’s ham-handed early attempts at coverup to the test-kit fiasco at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fighting the pandemic will take years. There is, so far, no vaccine or antiviral, leaving many people feeling vulnerable. Science is long, hard work, not all moonshots and miracles. Reflecting the public anxiety, President Trump has repeatedly urged that a new vaccine be developed fast, even though it will take a year — and probably longer — to develop, test and manufacture. The understandable dread about a spreading virus should not overshadow remarkable developments in the speed and transparency of biomedical science. Next-generation genetic sequencing has produced a sheaf of blueprints of the coronavirus makeup in record time. Over the past decade or so, such sequencing has become far cheaper and faster — a vital tool that wasn’t available, for example, when the HIV/AIDS pandemic began. Even when the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus took off in 2002 and peaked in February 2003, the full genome wasn’t sequenced until April of that year. Now, just weeks after the coronavirus outbreak, there are 161 genomes posted in one database, the Global Initiative to Share All Influenza Data, or GISAID. These show where each virus sample came from over time and emerging mutations. In another promising technology, researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health, including Jason McLellan at the University of Texas at Austin, used cyro-electron microscopy to create an image of the spike protein that the coronavirus uses to anchor itself on a human cell and penetrate it. Going after that spike in a vaccine or therapy might block the process of infection. Researchers constructed a three-dimensional structural map of the spike in just 12 days. Yet another development has been a boom in “open” science. As Kai Kupferschmidt reported in Science, researchers traditionally kept their findings


will make the world safer. The outbreak has produced its share of dubious distinctions, from China’s ham-handed early attempts at coverup to the test-kit fiasco at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fighting the pandemic will take years. There is, so far, no vaccine or antiviral, leaving many people feeling vulnerable. Science is long, hard work, not all moonshots and miracles. Reflecting the public anxiety, President Trump has repeatedly urged that a new vaccine be developed fast, even though it will take a year — and probably longer — to develop, test and manufacture. The understandable dread about a spreading virus should not overshadow remarkable developments in the speed and transparency of biomedical science. Next-generation genetic sequencing has produced a sheaf of blueprints of the coronavirus makeup in record time. Over the past decade or so, such sequencing has become far cheaper and faster — a vital tool that wasn’t available, for example, when the HIV/AIDS pandemic began. Even when the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus took off in 2002 and peaked in February 2003, the full genome wasn’t sequenced until April of that year. Now, just weeks after the coronavirus outbreak, there are 161 genomes posted in one database, the Global Initiative to Share All Influenza Data, or GISAID. These show where each virus sample came from over time and emerging mutations. In another promising technology, researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health, including Jason McLellan at the University of Texas at Austin, used cyro-electron microscopy to create an image of the spike protein that the coronavirus uses to anchor itself on a human cell and penetrate it. Going after that spike in a vaccine or therapy might block the process of infection. Researchers constructed a three-dimensional structural map of the spike in just 12 days. Yet another development has been a boom in “open” science. As Kai Kupferschmidt reported in Science, researchers traditionally kept their findings quiet, angling for publication in a prestigious and peer-reviewed journal, protective of their discovery and the credit for it. This hampered the response to outbreaks. Now, scientists from around the world, including China, are readily sharing their findings on biomedical preprint servers, bioRxiv and medRxiv, where the papers are not peer-reviewed but made available quickly. This has led to more collaboration across national boundaries than ever before, a necessity when fighting a disease that also leaps across national borders.


How is the coronavirus outbreak going to end? Here’s how similar epidemics played out.

As stock markets plunge, travel is disrupted and new coronavirus infections are diagnosed across the United States, one question on everyone’s mind is how the outbreak is going to end. No one knows for sure, but virologists say there are clues from similar outbreaks. Here are three scenarios: When severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) hit Asia in 2002, it was pretty scary — with a fatality rate of about 10 percent and no drugs shown to be effective against it. (The current coronavirus by comparison has a fatality rate that has been estimated ranging from less than 1 to 3.4 percent.) But within months, SARS was brought under control, and for the most part stamped out, by international cooperation and strict, old-school public health measures such as isolation, quarantine and contact tracing. This would be an ideal outcome. But the difference is that SARS had more severe symptoms than the current coronavirus, so people went to the hospital shortly after being infected. Cases of coronavirus will be harder to catch and isolate, said Stuart Weston, a postdoctoral virologist at University of Maryland. Weston is one of a small group of researchers who have received samples of the coronavirus and are studying it. Weston and other experts warn the outbreak in the United States and other countries is more widespread than tracked because many people with mild symptoms don’t know they have been infected. One of the grim lessons from the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa is how an epidemic can grow when it hits countries with weak health infrastructures. This is why the World Health Organization and others have been preparing countries in sub-Saharan Africa for the coronavirus, even though few cases so far have been reported there. Compared to the coronavirus, Ebola was less contagious and transmitted mainly by bodily fluids. The coronavirus can be transmitted in coughed and sneezed respiratory droplets that linger on surfaces. And yet Ebola infected more than 28,000 people and caused more than 11,000 deaths. Ebola is more lethal, and shortages of staff and supplies, poverty, delays by leaders and distrust of government exacerbated the outbreak. WHO leaders have been urging countries to prepare. On Friday, the organization raised its assessment of coronavirus to the highest level. “This is a reality check for every government on the planet: Wake up. Get ready. This virus may be on its way, and you need to


and left young people relatively unscathed. Florian Krammer, a virologist specializing in influenzas, noted that the world was vastly different in 1918. “We didn’t have the tools to diagnose diseases or antibiotics to fight secondary infections. Hospitals back then were places where you went to die, not to get treatment. And in 1918, the world was at war. And a lot of the people infected were soldiers stuck in trenches,” said Krammer, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “That’s hopefully not how this is going to play out.” Ultimately, how many people die of coronavirus depends on how widely it spreads, how prepared we are and what the virus’s true fatality rate turns out to be. If the coronavirus does indeed become ubiquitous like H1N1, it will be crucial to develop a vaccine. After the 2009 outbreak, experts developed an H1N1 vaccine that was included in flu shots people received in subsequent years. This helped protect especially vulnerable populations during following waves of infection. In the immediate future, anti-viral drugs may help, and labs around the world are testing their effectiveness against the coronavirus. No one knows if the coronavirus will be affected by seasons like the flu, despite President Trump’s claims that it could “go away” in April with warmer temperatures. “We’re still learning a lot about the virus,” said WHO epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove. “Right now there’s no reason to think this virus would act differently in different climate settings. We’ll have to see what happens as this progresses.” Coronaviruses are zoonotic, meaning they spread from animals to humans. Experts believe SARS spread from bats to civet cats to humans. The deadly Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) in 2012 was probably transmitted from bats to camels to humans. With the coronavirus, no one knows what animals caused the current outbreak. And it’s a mystery scientists will need to solve to prevent it from repeating in the future. One prime suspect is an endangered creature called the pangolin that looks like a cross between an anteater and an armadillo and whose scales are trafficked illegally. “With SARS, once they figured out the animals responsible in China, they were able to start culling them from the live markets,” said Vineet Menachery, a virologist at University of Texas Medical Branch. “It’s like a burst water pipe. You have to find the source in order to shut it off.”


Coronavirus arrives on Capitol Hill: First Senate staffer diagnosed with covid-19

A Washington staffer for Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, in what’s believed to be the first confirmed case of covid-19 on Capitol Hill, her office announced Wednesday night. “The individual has been in isolation since starting to have symptoms,” the office said in a public notice. “On the advice of the Attending Physician, the senator has closed her Washington, D.C. office this week for deep cleaning and staff will be teleworking.” According to the notice, the infected Senate staffer, who has not been publicly identified, “had no known contact with the senator or other members of Congress.” “The senator is requesting that testing be done on any other staffers who have been in contact with the individual and show symptoms,” her office said. A spokesperson for Cantwell did not immediately return a request for comment early Thursday. The first diagnosed case of covid-19 on Capitol Hill was announced on a day packed with coronavirus news: The World Health Organization officially declared the virus a global pandemic and President Trump announced he was restricting travel to the United States from Europe (but not the United Kingdom) for 30 days, beginning Friday at midnight. The notice comes as Public Health - Seattle & King County on Wednesday reported four new deaths, all of whom were residents at senior care facilities. The death toll in the state is approaching 30 as of early Thursday. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) also announced Wednesday a ban on gatherings of more than 250 people in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties. Hours earlier in the District of Columbia, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) declared a state of emergency after six more cases of coronavirus were confirmed. Her declaration included a recommendation that gatherings of 1,000 or more people be suspended until March 31. On Capitol Hill, leaders in the House and Senate agreed on Wednesday to limit the public’s access to Congress, canceling tours through the end of the month. No members of Congress have been diagnosed with covid-19, but some have taken precautionary measures this week. At least seven members of Congress, including Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), Trump’s incoming chief of staff, have either self-quarantined or isolated themselves after coming in contact with someone who has been infected with coronavirus. Earlier this week, Cantwell pleaded for increased testing for coronavirus in Washington state and the rest of the nation. “We’re


Schools are ‘deep cleaning’ to fight coronavirus. Why some experts say it’s probably a waste of time.

Delaware’s Laurel School District closed its campuses Thursday and Friday to “deep clean” its schools after it was learned that a staff member had recently had contact with a traveler from a country with a viral outbreak. Neither the staff member nor the traveler had symptoms, and the Delaware Division of Public Health advised the district that closing schools was an “unnecessary precaution.” Laurel is just one of a growing number of districts across the country in which schools are deep cleaning their buildings in the fight against the spread of the novel coronavirus, which causes the pandemic illness covid-19 — though some experts on infectious diseases say it could well be a waste of time. Deep cleaning involves floor-to-ceiling cleaning and disinfecting in a school building that sets the stage for regular, less comprehensive cleaning of heavily traveled areas and surfaces. Some schools are closing down briefly for deep cleaning and hiring third-party companies to do the job, while others are doing it on the weekend and with their own custodial staff. Marcus Plescia is the chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, which represents state public health departments. He said deep cleaning may be a waste of time and money. “There is this ongoing debate about how long the coronavirus can live on hard surfaces, and most of us think not very long,” he said. “It thrives on people’s bodies, not out in the open on a hard service. It’s not clear, so the uncertainty may be what is moving to have schools deep clean. “It makes people feel better that there is this thorough cleaning done, but how effective it is, we don’t know,” he said. He said that deep cleaning may be an attempt for some schools to find a balance between keeping schools open and closing them, when it is not clear closing them will help stem the virus, either. “Schools are struggling a bit to know what to do,” he said. “One of the big questions is whether schools should close for a long period of time. That is what the cleaning is an attempt to do: strike middle ground.” According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there has been no documentation that covid-19 has been transmitted to people “from surfaces contaminated with the virus." In some of its advice for schools, the CDC does not


Millions of U.S. students now affected by school closings related to the coronavirus outbreak (update)

million — and more are expected. Around the world, the number of students whose education has been interrupted by the virus has soared to 391.5 million students, according to UNESCO. The World Health Organization says that the number of confirmed cases of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, has surpassed 126,000, and that more than 4,600 people have died. The death toll in the United States had reached 38 by early Thursday, with more than 1,300 cases diagnosed. Experts warned they expect the crisis to worsen in the next few weeks. As of late Thursday, UNESCO reported, 29 countries had shuttered schools and universities nationwide. That was several million more students than earlier Thursday, showing the continuing and swift impact from the spread of the coronavirus. An additional 20 countries have had localized school closures to prevent or contain the virus, UNESCO said. The United States has seen a rapid rise in the number of students affected by school closures, according to a tally being kept by Education Week. On Wednesday, the number of K-12 students affected by closings or planned closings was slightly more than 1 million. By Thursday morning, it had risen to 1.3 million students. By late Thursday, Maryland announced it was closing all schools from March 16 through 27, affecting more than 889,000 students, and so did Ohio, affecting some 1.7 million students. Schools have closed for a host of reasons, including someone being diagnosed or exposed with the virus. In other cases, they close for cleaning or so teachers can be trained in online education. That total does not include the hundreds of thousands of university students whose schools are closing. They are being sent home, with plans for them to take courses online, and many are being told not to return for the rest of the school year. More than 100 colleges and universities have closed, according to this list being kept by Bryan Alexander, a scholar at Georgetown University. States with partial K-12 closures, according to Education Week, include California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Vermont and Washington. The District planned to close schools March 16 for a day of teacher training related to the virus. You can see data on U.S. closings here on EdWeek’s page, and the information on UNESCO’s page here.


Hong Kong learned from SARS. Can the United States learn from Hong Kong?

seriously in part because many people there were already accustomed to worrying about infectious diseases. “In Hong Kong it is pretty common, even without an outbreak, to see people going around in masks because they may be sick and they don’t want to infect other people,” he said. For many in Hong Kong, the habits that can help control an epidemic are quite common. That intrinsic level of consciousness may be hard for the United States and other countries to import. “I think there are lessons that the U.S. and other countries can pick up from Hong Kong,” Fukuda said, “but applying them may be difficult.” Hong Kong made investments to improve its health system after SARS, Fukuda said, funding new measures and building a major infectious disease program at the University of Hong Kong, the school at which he teaches. An official investigation led to the resignation of the city’s top health official in 2004. This time around, the city government launched a response plan well before confirming any cases. Amid pro-democracy protests, it was willing to take firm measures early on, announcing it would cancel school in late January and pushing citizens to socially distance from each other in public spaces. The world is adjusting to a new normal. Critics think otherwise, and point to the chaotic Chinese response in the early days of the virus. Fukuda, for his part, sees the lockdown on Wuhan as a crucial move for stopping the virus’s spread, but doubts that similar tactics could work for long in a democracy. “It’s unimaginable for me in the U.S. that you could lock down 50 million people,” he said. In South Korea, where there are nearly 8,500 confirmed cases, mass testing of more than 10,000 individuals a day has become the norm. One reason South Korea was motivated to test so many so quickly was the memory of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), an outbreak that killed 33 people in 2015, when faulty tests abetted the spread of the virus. The United States, meanwhile, stumbled in its own efforts to develop a test. Jeremy Konyndyk, who oversaw the international response to Ebola during the Obama administration, told The Post that it reflected a slow overall reaction. “They’ve simply lost time they can’t make up. You can’t get back six weeks of blindness,” he said. Hong Kong was not the only place to react with


For weeks, conservative media joined Trump in downplaying the threat of the coronavirus

about the coronavirus. In fact, coronavirus is not something new.” This is all incorrect. The strain of coronavirus that’s spreading now is new, which is why it’s so effective at infecting people: No one has immunity. The mortality rate is still uncertain, with the World Health Organization estimating a rate of more than 3 percent globally last week, but Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, put it closer to 1 percent in his comments to Congress on Wednesday. That’s the “10 times more lethal than the flu” number, because the seasonal flu has a mortality rate of about 0.1 percent. You'll note that Limbaugh is wrong about the lethality relative to the flu, as well. But he made the same claim on Feb. 25. “The fatality rate of this virus is less than the flu, far less than the flu,” Limbaugh said. He continued: “I said yesterday there are numerous types of coronavirus. This is coronavirus 19. Now, the official name of it is covid-19. But it’s in common parlance so that even people in Rio Linda can follow along, it’s coronavirus number 19. The fatality rate even in China is 2 percent. Now, that’s greater than the common cold but less than the flu. It’s a respiratory virus.” The name covid-19 is short for coronavirus disease 2019. The 19, in other words, refers to the year and not to it being the 19th such virus, as Limbaugh said — clearly to suggest that this is just another in a long line of the same-old. If you’re inclined to forgive Limbaugh’s errors given that he was opining several weeks ago, consider what he said about the illness Wednesday, after Fauci’s congressional testimony. “This coronavirus, they’re just — all of this panic is just not warranted,” Limbaugh said. “This, I’m telling you, when I tell you — when I’ve told you that this virus is the common cold. When I said that, it was based on the number of cases. It’s also based on the kind of virus this is. Why do you think this is covid-19? This is the 19th coronavirus. They’re not uncommon.” At another point, he expressed bemusement at the term “lethal.” “Ten times more lethal?” he asked. “Lethal than what? What does lethal mean? Does lethal kill you? Does lethal infect you? Does lethal give you a temperature of 102 versus


Travel prices are dropping almost everywhere as coronavirus fears take over

of the U.S. Travel Association, said in an interview this month. He cautioned that he doesn’t think the low-price stretch will last too long. “I think there is going to be an opportunity for Americans to get some good deals as the marketplace reacts and says: We’re going to price to increase occupancy.” Health experts have said travelers should heed specific travel warnings from the U.S. State Department and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when planning any trip, and prepare in case they get caught up in restrictions or an unexpected quarantine. And they should be cognizant of their own risk factors — especially age and underlying health issues — before traveling. Late Wednesday, President Trump announced a ban on foreign travelers from most of Europe — excluding the United Kingdom — to the United States for 30 days starting Friday. The U.S. State Department advised U.S. citizens to reconsider travel abroad altogether, in part because of the potential for quarantines and border restrictions. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned against all nonessential travel to most of Europe. The result of so much upheaval: Travel companies have gotten desperate for customers. Bob Levinstein, CEO of the cruise shopping site CruiseCompete, says that based on the business he’s doing, cancellations in March are way up and bookings are “through the floor” — down 68.5 percent. As a result, he says he’s never seen lower prices or better offers. That included a balcony room for a week-long Caribbean cruise for $250 and another cruise for $599 that includes $400 in onboard credit. Two cruise companies, Viking Cruises and Princess Cruises, have suspended voyages altogether for the near future. “Basically in the cruise business, rule number one is always fill the ship. And that’s because empty cabins don’t spend money at the bar, they don’t buy alcohol, they don’t gamble at the casino, they don’t buy shore excursions,” Levinstein said. “The ships keep sailing and they just have to keep reducing the prices, and that’s what’s going on. They’ve never been lower, and I suspect over the next couple of months, they will continue to go lower.” Travel data firm STR said in a report Wednesday that U.S. hotel occupancy in the first week of March dropped 7.3 percent compared with about the same time last year, and average daily rates were down 4.6 percent. The biggest drop in


El Salvador's president says the country has no coronavirus cases, declares a national quarantine

SAN SALVADOR — First, President Nayib Bukele banned visitors from high-risk countries — not just China, South Korea and Iran, but also France and Spain, among others. He brought in new equipment to check the temperatures of incoming passengers. He sanitized the international airport. Then, on Wednesday, he declared an Alerta Naranja — an orange alert. He announced a national quarantine, shuttering schools for three weeks, banning gatherings of more than 500 people, barring foreigners from entering the country and imposing a 30-day quarantine on Salvadorans entering from abroad. Other countries have taken similar steps. But one fact sets El Salvador apart: It hasn’t confirmed any cases of the novel coronavirus. Nonetheless, Bukele has been far ahead of his neighbors in his reaction to covid-19, which the World Health Organization declared a pandemic on Wednesday. “I know this will be criticized, but let’s put ourselves in Italy’s shoes. Italy wishes they could’ve done this before,” he said in a national address on Wednesday. “Our health system is not at Italy’s level. It’s not at South Korea’s level.” Nearly a third of the population in this Central American nation of 6 million live in poverty. Public health analysts have warned that poor and marginalized people are at a heightened risk as the virus spreads. El Salvador earlier banned travelers from China, South Korea, Italy, Iran, France, Spain and Germany, countries with the most confirmed cases of the virus. But the quarantine struck some analysts as strange, given the lack of cases in El Salvador. “Why would a country declare quarantine without any confirmed cases?” asked epidemiologist Gerardo Chowell-Puente, chair of the department of population health sciences at Georgia State University. He wondered whether Salvadoran authorities had seen factors that indicate trouble ahead. “It gives the impression they are seeing a surge in hospitalizations and that may be overwhelming the system,” he said. “I don’t think someone would declare a quarantine suddenly without evidence of a substantial outbreak.” Bukele emphasized Wednesday that the country had not yet had a confirmed case of the virus. “And not because it hasn’t been detected,” he said. “The necessary tests have been conducted and they’ve been negative.” The government said 56 people were under quarantine. It was unclear whether any of them have been tested for covid-19. The center-right Bukele, 38, a charismatic former mayor of San Salvador, was elected last year as a political outsider


Europe blindsided by Trump’s travel restrictions, with many seeing political motive

decision-making. The ban covered only the Schengen area, the European Union’s border-free travel zone, a 26-nation region that does not include Britain or the Irish Republic. Any non-U.S. citizen who has been in the region in the past two weeks is included in the ban, with a handful of exceptions. The E.U. is a regular target of Trump’s ire, and he has praised Britain’s exit from the bloc. But there are more cases of coronavirus in Britain than in many of the countries covered by the ban. Across the 26 nations hit by the ban, there were more than 21,000 active cases of the novel coronavirus as of Thursday morning, and more than 900 deaths, according to a database maintained by Johns Hopkins University. Italy was the locus of the pandemic, with more than half of the active cases — 10,590 — and the vast majority of deaths, 827. Britain had about 500 active cases and 10 deaths, and Ireland had more than 40 active cases and one death. Trump said Britain was excluded because it was “doing a good job” containing the virus. But its active-case total rose by more than 30 percent Thursday from a day earlier. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson issued a dire warning Thursday evening. “I must level with you and the British public,” he said. “Many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.” Some in Europe wondered whether Britain and Ireland were exempted because they host Trump-owned properties. In any case, the decision appeared to confound even leaders of the British government and former U.S. homeland security officials, who said that scientific evidence did not support travel restrictions. Critics of the ban said travel restrictions — such as those imposed on China early in the crisis — no longer make sense, given that the novel coronavirus is now global. The energy and resources expended on the closures would be better spent on expanding U.S. hospital capacity, some experts said. “With regard to flight bans, we are always guided by the science as we make our decisions here. The advice we are getting is that there isn’t evidence that interventions like closing borders or travel bans are going to have a material effect on the spread of the infections,” Rishi Sunak, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, told the BBC on Thursday morning. Thomas P. Bossert “There’s little value to European travel


Critics of the ban said travel restrictions — such as those imposed on China early in the crisis — no longer make sense, given that the novel coronavirus is now global. The energy and resources expended on the closures would be better spent on expanding U.S. hospital capacity, some experts said. “With regard to flight bans, we are always guided by the science as we make our decisions here. The advice we are getting is that there isn’t evidence that interventions like closing borders or travel bans are going to have a material effect on the spread of the infections,” Rishi Sunak, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, told the BBC on Thursday morning. Thomas P. Bossert “There’s little value to European travel restrictions. Poor use of time & energy,” Bossert said Thursday on Twitter. “Earlier, yes. Now, travel restrictions/screening are less useful. We have nearly as much disease here in the US as the countries in Europe. We MUST focus on layered community mitigation measures-Now!” In continental Europe, many felt that the White House’s decision was another political strike at the already enfeebled transatlantic relationship between the United States and some of its closest allies. “Trump needed a narrative to exonerate his administration from any responsibility in the crisis. The foreigner is always a good scapegoat. The Chinese has already been used. So, let’s take the European, not any Europe, the EU-one,” Gérard Araud, France’s former ambassador to the United States, said in a statement posted on Twitter. “Doesn’t make sense but [it is] ideologically healthy.” The move added to the sense that the world’s industrial powers were failing to work together to contain the virus and might even be working against one another. Under previous presidents, the United States has often taken the lead in directing coordinated global responses to world challenges. Trump has sought to minimize the virus, and he has undermined his scientific advisers and blamed other countries for the pandemic. And he has also tangled with European countries — Washington’s closest allies — for three years on issues of defense spending, climate change and trade. “Any attempt to contain the #CoronaOutbreak is welcome, but the decision of @realDonaldTrump to exclude the UK from a European travel ban is nothing short of irresponsible,” former Finnish prime minister Alexander Stubb wrote on Twitter. “Viruses do not recognize borders. Decisions should be based on facts, not politics.” michael.birnbaum@washpost.com james.mcauley@washpost.com


Fierce ‘dragon’ storm hits Egypt with flooding rain and damaging winds. Israel braces for impact.

An unusually powerful storm has slammed into the Middle East, unleashing torrential rain, destructive winds and towering walls of dust. This storm is occurring as Egypt, Israel and other nations in the region are confronted by the growing threat from the novel coronavirus. The vigorous storm, nicknamed the “dragon” on social media, has left five dead in Egypt and is plowing toward Israel. Forecasts from Israel’s meteorological service are calling for thunderstorms with hail across much of Israel on Thursday night into Friday morning, along with windy conditions with gusts as high as 50 mph from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and north to the border with Lebanon. On Thursday in Egypt, the tempest shut down schools, government offices, rail service and cruises, as well as Luxor International Airport, a major tourist hub, according to the Associated Press. “This is the heaviest rain in recent memory,” wrote Sudarsan Raghavan, The Washington Post’s Cairo bureau chief, via instant message from Egypt. “The rain was so heavy that houses, including ours, are leaking lots of water from the ceilings. We have towels and buckets everywhere to catch the water. The houses in Egypt are not built to weather big rain storms.” Flooding rains were blamed for the death of a child and five injuries in the southern province of Qena. In other areas, high winds careening toward the ground from thunderstorms whipped up massive walls of dust: The storm also led to power outages, car accidents, road closures and collapsed structures, according to local news media. While the worst weather in Egypt has mostly passed, a narrow corridor of intense winds is possible on the storm’s backside, sweeping into Egypt overnight into Friday morning with 50 mph gusts. The sprawling system is slamming Israel with pockets of damaging winds and flooding rains. According to the Times of Israel, the country’s meteorological service expects 60 mph or greater winds to arrive Thursday night with the strongest gusts in mountainous areas. However, some computer models anticipate wind gusts of nearly 75 mph blasting along the coast of Israel. The high winds could lead to downed trees, power outages and even some structural damage. Heavy rains and potential flooding is expected in Israel between Thursday night and Friday morning before conditions improve by evening. Parts of Lebanon and Jordan may experience similar impacts from rain and wind. However, as the storm progresses east into Iraq, it


Trump's Europe travel ban causes confusion

Katie Zezima explains the new U.S. travel restrictions on travel to Europe. Peter Whoriskey and Abha Bhattarai report on how paid sick leave, or lack thereof, is exposing vulnerabilities in the U.S. And, Ben Golliver on the NBA’s suspended season.


Trump’s Europe travel ban causes confusion

Post Reports is the daily podcast from The Washington Post. Unparalleled reporting. Expert insight. Clear analysis. Everything you’ve come to expect from the newsroom of The Post. For your ears. Martine Powers is your host, asking the questions you didn’t know you wanted answered. Listen online. Trump announced late Wednesday that flights from Europe to the U.S. would be halted starting Friday. It’s the most aggressive move by the federal government in response to the coronavirus, but is it enough? Millions of workers lack sick pay. This will affect how the outbreak will spread in the U.S. NBA suspends season indefinitely after a Utah Jazz player tests positive for coronavirus. Follow the Post’s live coverage of coronavirus here.


Ireland and Britain aren’t part of Trump’s coronavirus travel ban. This is why.

who have been in … the Schengen Area.” The idea behind the Schengen area is straightforward. It is supposed to allow people to cross national borders between Schengen members without having their passports or identity cards checked. This requires a lot of trust between countries, since, for example, once someone has entered Greece, they are in theory capable of moving to Germany, Italy, France, Hungary or any other member country without anyone stopping them or checking who they are. This has led to the creation of a massive system of information exchange among member countries. However, when Schengen was being created in the early 1990s, the U.K. decided not to participate. As an island state (spanning Britain and the northern part of the island of Ireland), it has a different understanding of borders than mainland European countries, and it was also suspicious of deeper integration with other European countries. Ireland had a common set of travel arrangements with the United Kingdom that it did not want to give up, so it too decided not to join Schengen (although the U.K. and Ireland shared information with Schengen after it became more closely integrated into the European Union). The result is that it is possible, at least in principle, to travel across much of Western Europe without having your passport checked at the border. Schengen did not really get rid of border controls In practice, border-free travel was never quite as simple as the rhetoric suggested. States continued to maintain some control over their borders and conduct random spot checks. Recently, the politics of Schengen has become increasingly complicated, thanks to internal European disagreements about migration. When the Schengen area was created, no one expected that Europe would have to deal with massive flows of immigrants and refugees. Wars in Libya and Syria, and pressure from people who wanted a better life in Europe for themselves and their children, changed all that. The result was that Germany, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Norway reintroduced border controls in 2015, to try to stop migrants who had landed in countries such as Italy and Greece from entering their territory. The novel coronavirus outbreak has led to a similar reaction. The rapidly growing number of cases in Italy has led other Schengen members to talk about introducing new travel restrictions to prevent the spread of infection. Austria has said that people can only enter from Italy


The Daily 202: Clarifications after Trump’s Oval Office address are emblematic of his uneven coronavirus response

who oversaw the U.S. response to the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, the 2014 Ebola epidemic and the 2016 Zika epidemic, says that in a worst-case scenario, but one that is not implausible, half the U.S. population would become infected and more than 1 million people would die,” Joel Achenbach, William Wan and Lena H. Sun report. “U.S. officials have said they are working with 50 academic modeling groups around the country. But so far, no projections of the outbreak’s trajectory have been publicly released by the CDC or the White House coronavirus task force. Still, Frieden said, ‘anyone who says that they know where this is going with confidence doesn’t know enough about it.’ … In his Capitol Hill testimony, [Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,] said that a plausible covid-19 fatality rate could be 1 percent. That, he said, is 10 times as lethal as seasonal influenza. He was clear: This is more dangerous than the flu.” Congress’s in-house physician, Brian Monahan, expects 70 million to 150 million Americans will contract the virus. “The new coronavirus can live in the air for several hours and on some surfaces for as long as two to three days, tests by U.S. government and other scientists have found,” the AP reports. “Their work, published Wednesday, doesn’t prove that anyone has been infected through breathing it from the air or by touching contaminated surfaces, researchers stress. … For this study, researchers used a nebulizer device to put samples of the new virus into the air, imitating what might happen if an infected person coughed or made the virus airborne some other way. They found that viable virus could be detected up to three hours later in the air, up to four hours on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to two to three days on plastic and stainless steel.” “Interviews with more than two dozen firms and workers reveal that the pain is now translating into layoffs in a wider circle of industries, including a bakery and a chain restaurant,” Abha Bhattarai, Heather Long and Rachel Siegel report. “At the Port of Los Angeles, 145 drivers have been laid off and others have been sent home without pay as massive ships from China stopped arriving and work dried up. At travel agencies in Atlanta and Los Angeles, several workers lost their jobs as bookings


NHL suspends season indefinitely as coronavirus outbreak continues

“I think we all believe that the health and well-being of every individual person has to be the priority when decisions like this are made,” Boston Bruins General Manager Don Sweeney said in a statement. "… Hopefully we are able to resume playing at some point and the pursuit of the Stanley Cup is realized and it becomes a small part of the story. Wednesday night, after the news of the NBA’s suspension of play because the Jazz’s Rudy Gobert tested positive for the coronavirus, the NHL stated it would not immediately suspend its season, releasing a statement saying it would continue to consult with medical experts and evaluate its options. NHL games continued Wednesday night without disruption. Earlier on Wednesday, the Columbus Blue Jackets and San Jose Sharks both announced they would play home games without fans in attendance after their respective state and local governments declared that mass gatherings would be banned because of coronavirus concerns. As of Thursday morning, the Washington Capitals remained slated to play their scheduled game against the Detroit Red Wings on Thursday night at Capital One Arena even though the D.C. government urged the cancellation of all nonessential mass gatherings through the end of the month because of the coronavirus. That included conferences, conventions and entertainment events drawing more than 1,000 people. Meanwhile, the Washington Wizards, who share space at Capital One Arena with the Capitals, announced Thursday morning that players and team personnel had been told to self-quarantine as the NBA coronavirus scare continued. Players, coaches and staffers who “exhibit or develop flu-like symptoms will be tested” for the coronavirus, the team’s statement read. The Capitals issued their own statement later Thursday, saying the team “will continue to closely monitor the health of players, coaches and hockey operations staff. Those who exhibit illness symptoms will be evaluated by medical personnel and tested when necessary, per CDC guidelines.” Capitals forward Lars Eller, who is from Denmark, talked after Wednesday’s practice about how the coronavirus is resonating both in the United States and with friends and family abroad. “It’s very new to everybody,” Eller said. “Nobody’s really experienced something like this in our lifetime, so even the people making the rules for us have not been through something like this. So it’s a very fluid situation that looks like we weren’t very well prepared for, so whatever’s going to happen is going to happen.”


news in shock, and markets plummeted in the aftermath of the White House announcement. In Britain, the benchmark FTSE 100 index, which tracks the 100 largest firms on the London Stock Exchange, fell Thursday morning on news of Trump’s travel ban. The steep drop brought the FTSE to its lowest level in eight years. France’s CAC 40 index fell by more than 10 percent. Germany’s DAX index fell by 9 percent. Wall Street followed suit. Stocks plunged deeper after days of major losses. As in Europe, the U.S. sell-off was driven in part by fallout from Trump’s travel block. The details of the travel restrictions also confounded many European leaders and policymakers, underscoring the view that the decision was largely political. The ban on flights covered only the Schengen area, the European Union’s border-free travel zone, a 26-nation region that does not include Britain or Ireland. The European Union has been a regular target for Trump’s irritation, and he has praised Britain for quitting the bloc. But there are more cases of coronavirus in Britain than in many of the countries covered by the ban. Across the 26 nations hit by the ban, there were 21,080 active cases of coronavirus as of Thursday morning, and 952 deaths, according to a database maintained by Johns Hopkins University. Italy was the locus of the pandemic, with more than half of the active cases — 10,590 — and the vast majority of deaths, 827. Britain had 430 active cases and eight deaths, while Ireland had 42 active cases and one death. Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar planned to meet Trump on Thursday in Washington as part of St. Patrick’s Day events. Some in Europe wondered if Britain and Ireland were exempted because they contain Trump-owned properties. In any case, the decision appeared to confound even leaders of the British government and former U.S. homeland security officials, who said that scientific evidence did not support travel restrictions. Critics of the ban said travel restrictions — such as those imposed on China early in the crisis — no longer make sense given that coronavirus is now global. The energy and resources on the closures would be better spent on expanding U.S. hospital capacity, some experts said. “With regard to flight bans, we are always guided by the science as we make our decisions here. The advice we are getting is that there isn’t evidence that