Olympic officials concede Tokyo Games may be postponed; Canada won’t send athletes in 2020

Games can’t be held in July,” Ian Chesterman, the Australian chef de mission for Tokyo, said in a statement. Sarah Hirshland, chief executive of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, issued a joint statement Sunday with Han Xiao, chair of the organization’s athletes advisory council, saying the IOC letter was “an important step in providing clarity, but our athlete community continues to face enormous ambiguity surrounding the 2020 Games in Tokyo.” The USOPC officials said they’re “eager to continue to explore alternatives to ensure all athletes have a robust and fulfilling Olympic and Paralympic experience, regardless of when that can safely occur. Together we will find solutions that keep the spirit of the Games alive.” The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency also called for a postponement Sunday. Travis Tygart, USADA’s chief executive, told The Washington Post: “We agree the Games should be postponed, unfortunately, up to a year in fairness to athletes whose lives have been upended and to ensure they don’t potentially become the dirtiest Games ever due to the significant reduction of anti-doping efforts due to covid-19.” By acknowledging postponement as a possibility, the IOC has relaxed its tone while still holding on to hope that the Tokyo Games can go on as scheduled. “It is our experience as athletes that you must always be ready to adapt to new situations,” Bach wrote. “For this reason we have, as indicated before, been thinking in different scenarios and are adapting them almost day by day.” Bach did not outline possible scenarios. A one-year delay appears to be the most likely option, though organizers also could consider a postponement of a few months or perhaps up to two years. While an Olympics has never been postponed, several have taken place later on the calendar, including the 2000 Sydney and 1988 Seoul Games, which both took place in late September, and the 1964 Tokyo and the 1968 Mexico City Games, which took place in October. As concerns over the rapid spread of the disease have grown in recent weeks, pressure has mounted on Olympic officials to make a difficult decision on an event that poses a massive problem for organizers and athletes alike. As they publicly encouraged athletes to continue training for this summer, Olympic officials privately discussed holding the Summer Games without spectators or rescheduling the event for a later date. The Olympics, scheduled to begin July 24, draw together more than


Coronavirus cases spike in Washington region as testing capacity ramps up

this year, virtually.” A spokesman for Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said the governor would announce “additional actions” Monday morning to try to slow infection rates. Efforts to stem the spread of the coronavirus are already affecting public transit in the region. Starting Tuesday, Metro will require all Metrobus riders to board using the buses’ rear doors, making rides essentially free, according to a letter to employees, which also outlined a reduced service schedule. Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld said he is hoping to provide riders with reduced but steady service after a week of drastic cutbacks and sudden shifts that left some people stranded. The overall tally of known covid-19 cases for the region rose to 586 on Sunday. There were 221 known cases in Virginia, 245 in Maryland and 120 in the District, in addition to eight related deaths. Maryland health officials reported the death of a Montgomery County woman in her 40s, the youngest person in the state to die of the virus and the first woman. The woman, who suffered from underlying medical conditions, was the third person to die in Maryland and the first covid-19 death in Montgomery County. She died unexpectedly, and an autopsy found that she had the virus. D.C. officials announced the death of a 65-year-old woman, the second linked to covid-19 in the city. The woman died Saturday evening after she was admitted to a hospital with underlying health conditions, city officials said. In Virginia, where schools are shut down for two weeks, Northam said he will consult with state education officials Monday and expects to issue further guidance about the length of the closure. Northam declined to put a specific timeline on the crisis. Asked about persistent rumors that the state is considering a more restrictive lockdown of businesses and shelter-in-place orders for residents, Northam said: “We have a lot of options on the table.” Said Northam: “I will assess what is going on in Virginia on a daily basis and make those decisions.” Northam also called on hospitals and doctor’s offices to reschedule elective surgeries, and renewed his calls for residents to take the threat seriously by staying home, not going into crowds or holding gatherings. “I also know that some people are not listening,” he said. “And I want you to know, you are putting every single one of us in Virginia at risk.” If restaurants violate


Rick Steves, Samantha Brown, Phil Keoghan and other travel pros reflect on being grounded

The coronavirus has clipped our airplane wings, silenced our train whistle, idled our car engine. We're hunkering down at home to avoid trailing germs around the planet. To think, not so long ago we were grumbling about diminishing legroom and escalating baggage fees. Those were the days. And we will have them again, but maybe with less indignation and more gratefulness for what we temporarily lost. As you wait on the phone to cancel a trip, or return your untouched suitcase to the basement, remember that you are not alone. We are all in this together: People who travel only once a year are standing (six feet apart) beside those who make a living by avoiding home. To reinforce this sense of camaraderie, we checked in with some of the most esteemed professionals and personalities in the travel industry. We spoke to travel blogger Lee Abbamonte, the youngest person to visit every country in the world, plus both poles; Samantha Brown, host of the Emmy Award-winning series, “Samantha Brown’s Places to Love,” on PBS; Pauline Frommer, editorial director of Frommer’s guidebooks and Frommers.com; Tom Hall, vice president of experience at Lonely Planet and travel writer; Brian Kelly, founder and chief executive of the Points Guy; Sean Keener, chairman of AirTreks and BootsnAll Travel Network; Phil Keoghan, host of “The Amazing Race” on CBS; Darley Newman, creator and host of the award-winning series, “Travels With Darley,” on PBS; Rolf Potts, travel writer, podcaster and author of “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-term World Travel”; Rick Steves, European travel expert with a guidebook series, public television and radio shows, and travel program; and Tony Wheeler, founder of Lonely Planet. The virus can disrupt our travel plans but, as you’ll see from the answers below, it is also taking our wanderlust to even greater heights. Q: Abbamonte: Brown: Frommer: Hall: Keener: Kelly: Keoghan Newman: Potts: Steves: Wheeler: Q: Abbamonte: Brown: Frommer: Hall: Keener: Kelly: Keoghan: Newman: Potts: Steves: Wheeler: Q: Abbamonte: Brown: Frommer: Hall: Keener: Kelly: One of my favorite things to do is scuba diving. I plan to book a trip to go scuba diving in the South Pacific. Hello, Palau! I also want to take the world’s longest flight from EWR [Newark Liberty International Airport] to SIN [Singapore Changi Airport] and explore Singapore’s incredible food scene. Keoghan: Newman: Potts: Steves: Wheeler: andrea.sachs@washpost.com


Facing covid-19 reality: A national lockdown is no cure

Michael T. Osterholm is regents professor and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. Mark Olshaker is a writer and documentary filmmaker. They are the authors of “ Covid-19 will go away eventually in one of two ways. Either we will develop a vaccine to prevent it, or the virus will burn itself out as the spread of infection comes to confer a form of herd immunity on the population. Neither of those possibilities will occur quickly. It is time to face reality. We urgently need a unified national strategy, one informed by the best science about stopping diseases like covid-19 and from virus control efforts in China, Singapore and Hong Kong, as well as realistic projections of the human and economic toll of any option we pursue. Our way of life cannot survive an indefinite series of short-term action plans. We have to ask what we hope to accomplish with limited self-quarantines and shelter-in-place directives. Clearly, as one objective, we seek to “flatten the curve” in an effort to keep our already overburdened health-care system from being overrun. The ability of our hospitals to continue providing care to a flood of covid-19 patients, while still treating the other patients they normally have, all the while protecting health-care professionals, will be a major factor in reducing bad outcomes for victims of the coronavirus and other illnesses as well. But how do we actually accomplish this? What happens after a several-week moratorium on normal activity? Does the president, governor or mayor declare another? While California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has made a courageous move by locking down his state, how long can 40 million California residents be kept at home? And will it be long enough to make a significant difference? China and Italy have imposed near-draconian lockdowns in an effort to halt the spread of covid-19. But how and when will these two “test” nations return to normal life? And when they do, will there be a major second wave of cases? If that happens, should they simply “rinse and repeat”? As a country, with momentum building for a possible national shutdown directive, we are on the verge of ringing a giant bell that we don’t know how to un-ring. Yet we don’t, for example, have good data on the real impact of closing public and private K-12 schools on the spread


covid-19 patients, while still treating the other patients they normally have, all the while protecting health-care professionals, will be a major factor in reducing bad outcomes for victims of the coronavirus and other illnesses as well. But how do we actually accomplish this? What happens after a several-week moratorium on normal activity? Does the president, governor or mayor declare another? While California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has made a courageous move by locking down his state, how long can 40 million California residents be kept at home? And will it be long enough to make a significant difference? China and Italy have imposed near-draconian lockdowns in an effort to halt the spread of covid-19. But how and when will these two “test” nations return to normal life? And when they do, will there be a major second wave of cases? If that happens, should they simply “rinse and repeat”? As a country, with momentum building for a possible national shutdown directive, we are on the verge of ringing a giant bell that we don’t know how to un-ring. Yet we don’t, for example, have good data on the real impact of closing public and private K-12 schools on the spread of covid-19. Hong Kong and Singapore, advanced city-states that experienced the outbreak early, both attempted to respond quickly and efficiently. Hong Kong closed schools; Singapore did not, and there was hardly any difference in the rate of transmission. The second-order effect of shutting schools is that hardest hit will be those least able to afford to miss work to care for homebound children. And what of our health professionals with children? Add to that firefighters, police officers, utility workers, delivery drivers and other essential personnel, and the magnitude of the problem is clear. The Imperial College of London Consider the effect of shutting down offices, schools, transportation systems, restaurants, hotels, stores, theaters, concert halls, sporting events and other venues indefinitely and leaving all of their workers unemployed and on the public dole. The likely result would be not just a depression but a complete economic breakdown, with countless permanently lost jobs, long before a vaccine is ready or natural immunity takes hold. We can’t have everyone stay home and still produce and distribute the basics needed to sustain life and fight the disease. We are in uncharted territory. But the best alternative will probably entail letting those at low risk


With spotty sick leave and health care, adjunct professors worry about the spread of coronavirus

Despite suffering from bronchitis at the beginning of the semester, Valeria Pappas-Brown, 48, soldiered on to teach biology classes at the Community College of Baltimore County. The part-time instructor suspects that trudging from one class to another — instead of resting — prolonged her illness. But she could not afford to miss class. “Because of the pay, because of the sick leave — I just don’t have enough accrued — I can’t take any time off,” Pappas-Brown said. She fears the possibility of once again having to choose between her health and her financial well-being as Maryland and the rest of the nation contend with the novel coronavirus pandemic. The spread of the coronavirus in the United States is rattling adjunct instructors. Few receive health insurance through the colleges and universities where they work, and fewer still have paid sick leave. Even adjuncts with access to paid time off say there are barriers that impede their ability to take advantage of the benefit. The Families First Coronavirus Response Act held out hope that any workers sidelined by the disease could count on paid time off. But in a compromise to pass the legislation, lawmakers narrowed the leave provision to apply to only employers with 500 or fewer workers. That effectively carves out many private colleges and universities — most have more than 500 employees — and leaves part-time instructors out in the cold. As colleges try to mitigate the impact of covid-19, adjuncts are imploring schools to consider instructors’ vulnerability. In New Jersey, the adjunct faculty union at Rutgers University wrote the school’s president, Robert L. Barchi, last week requesting he extend health care to part-time lecturers or at least provide free access to campus clinics. Instructors say without this access, adjuncts who lack health insurance are unlikely to get tested for the coronavirus, even if symptomatic. Rutgers officials said in response to questions from The Washington Post that there will be no changes to the existing health-care plan, offering no further explanation. “Not only would denying us access to basic health-care services amount to a grave failure of leadership, it would also be the clearest expression from the Rutgers administration that our lives are truly unimportant to them,” said Bryan Sacks, treasurer of the union for part-time faculty workers at Rutgers. It is part of the larger American Association of University Professors and American Federation of Teachers. Part-time adjunct


Face mask shortage prompts CDC to loosen coronavirus guidance

strongly opposed to any measures that fail to provide optimal protection and infection control standards,” they wrote in a March 6 letter to CDC officials. The unions include National Nurses United, the American Federation of Teachers, and the Transport Workers Union of America. “Now is the time to use every possible tool available to guarantee the highest level of protection, guided by the precautionary principle, to prevent further spread of infection, protect healthcare workers, and preserve our capacity to respond to a widespread outbreak.” The CDC guidance said the changes were prompted by the shortages. Surgical face masks will block the respiratory droplets produced by patients who cough or sneeze, which is the primary way the virus is spread. The CDC is recommending that N95 respirators be reserved for protecting workers in the riskiest situations, where fine aerosol is likely to be generated. These include certain medical procedures like intubation, which helps a severely ill patient breathe. CDC’s guidelines also recommend that health-care facilities consider alternatives to the N95 masks, such as more elaborate (and expensive) powered air purifying respirators. “I recognize that individual facilities may face shortages of certain types of personal protective equipment, including N95 respirators, but there is no evidence that surgical masks are adequate to prevent exposure of frontline health care workers to the virus that causes covid-19. CDC should prioritize conserving equipment and systematically addressing any shortages as they occur, instead of placing every health care worker at increased risk,” said Rep. Robert Scott, D-Va., who chairs the House committee on Education and Labor. During the height of flu season over the course of four years, researchers studied flu-infection rates among health care workers at seven U.S. medical centers. Some workers were randomly assigned to wear N95 respirators and others surgical masks. The two groups showed no significant difference in flu infection rates, according to the study, which was published in September in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. The government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak in the United States has highlighted one of the country’s biggest gaps in preparedness for battling the respiratory virus that causes covid-19. The United States has about 1 percent of the 3.5 billion respirators that experts estimate the health-care system needs a year to fight a severe influenza pandemic. That translates to 12 million N95 respirators and 30 million surgical masks, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex


Suspending immigration filing deadlines would save lives

where each component of the Department of Homeland Security asked whether its people were safe and “accounted for.” Each time we were able to breathe a sigh of relief. Once we knew our immigration officers were safe, we then had to assess: “Were they going to continue to be safe where they were staying? Did they need to be relocated? Did they need to be called back to the U.S.?” Today the threat is right here inside our borders. It moves quietly, and at the rate things are going it will become far more deadly. It is covid-19, and its fatal blows can strike not just the elderly and medically vulnerable but, as studies are starting to show, just about anybody. USCIS has the power with just a quickly drafted notice to save people simply by extending for the duration of the pandemic any deadlines that will affect foreign nationals currently in the United States. This would include granting automatic extensions for those whose status will expire during the national emergency, and for a reasonable period thereafter; excusing the late filing of change-of-status requests; and granting “deferred action” status for those whose status will be expiring but who otherwise have no legal avenue for extension. All of these measures have already been requested by the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the Society for Human Resource Management and other groups. Commendably, USCIS has relaxed certain “wet” signature requirements ordinarily applicable; beyond that, however, it has been silent as to its intentions. Because USCIS is a paper-based environment, and because state and local businesses have closed and shelter-at-home orders have expanded, deadline extensions are critical. In their absence, foreign nationals and their employers face the awful choice between sacrificing lawful immigration status and risking both deadly infection and sanction for violating state orders. For immigration lawyers, the prospect of malpractice suits and professional sanctions is added to the impossible decision matrix. By staying upcoming deadlines, USCIS itself would drastically reduce its workload during this period, leaving it free to focus on already backlogged cases and also reduce the number of officers who would need to travel to their offices to address that workload. These common sense measures would in no way undermine the integrity of the immigration system, but would rather preserve public safety as well as USCIS’s ability to return to full operation once the national emergency subsides. USCIS must act now.


Coronavirus could hit the world’s most vulnerable people hardest

in “War-shattered Syria is perhaps the biggest concern, particularly the northwest of the country where fighting continues between government forces and rebels despite a fragile cease-fire,” my colleagues reported. “Nearly 4 million people, most of them displaced from elsewhere in the country, are crammed into a sliver of territory along the Turkish border, which has surpassed Gaza as the most densely populated part of the Middle East.” And in Gaza, hemmed in by Israel, the risks are great. “If the virus reaches us, many people will die,” said Mahmoud Shakshak, 65, an unemployed resident of a semi-permanent refugee camp in the blockaded territory, to The Post. “Not just because of the virus, but because the world will close to us and they will let us die alone.” Within Europe’s borders, refugees and asylum seekers face an all the more precarious existence in the shadow of the pandemic. “The situation of exiled people is unspeakable: lack of accommodation, cold, humidity, stress, fatigue, crowding together in light tents, daily expulsion from places of life, deplorable sanitary conditions,” wrote 24 French aid organizations in a letter addressed to the government last week, warning of the deplorable situation for many migrants in northern France. But there’s limited sympathy for them, now The Trump administration also followed suit, invoking the outbreak to enact a new crackdown that would enable the administration to immediately turn away asylum seekers who appear at U.S. borders. “The proposed new ban on asylum that would turn back asylum seekers will endanger the lives of even more refugees and further jeopardize our collective public health by sending people to live on the Mexican side of the border where they will lack adequate shelter and care and where there is no way to prevent the spread of coronavirus,” wrote Yael Schacher of Refugees International. Aid organizations are infuriated by the seeming indifference of national governments to the refugee plight. “How are you supposed to wash your hands regularly if you have no running water or soap?” asked Jonathan Whittall of Doctors Without Borders. “How can you implement ‘social distancing’ if you live in a slum or a refugee camp? How are you supposed to stop crossing borders if you are fleeing from war?” Read more: How politicians are using the coronavirus to seize control In the age of coronavirus, big government is back A global pandemic creates an ‘existential’ moment for Europe


This isn’t the first time Olympics in Japan have been disrupted

the Olympic flame in Berlin,” the Washington Post editorial board wrote. “Will there be any essence of fair play and sportsmanship left to illuminate the twelfth Olympics in Tokyo?” International Olympic Committee officials began to worry about a nationalistic repeat in Tokyo, Collins wrote. It didn’t help when Japan resumed its hostilities with China the next year. By early 1938, the British delegation was threatening a boycott, spurring rumors that the United States might follow. The New York Times reported that a poll of potential U.S. Olympians showed overwhelming support for attending the Games. But a respected member of the American Olympic Committee stepped down, saying he could not in good conscience send athletes “to a country that stands for what Japan stands for.” And in Japan, pressure was mounting. Although construction on a rowing course, a cyclodrome and a new hotel was complete, a wartime austerity plan created a shortage of steel needed to finish the job. Finally, in mid-July, the government pulled the plug, forcing the organizing committee to announce it was forfeiting the chance to host the Games and would try again in 1944. Olympic officials said the Games would be postponed and soon named Helsinki as the new host city of the Summer Olympics. The Winter Olympics, which had been originally been awarded to Sapporo, Japan, and were also forfeited, were sent back to its previous host city, Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Nazi Germany. (The Summer and Winter Olympics were held in the same year every four years until 1992.) But the march to World War II had begun. When the Nazis invaded Poland, the 1940 Olympics were canceled altogether. Instead of the track and field or pitch or pool, the young athletes of the world headed to the front lines. At least 500 athletes who had previously competed in the Olympics were killed during World War II, according to Sports Reference. As Japan and the IOC hit the pause button on the 2020 Games, Olympic hopefuls’ dreams of glory will probably be deferred for another year. But it’s a better fate than that of the athletes who might have won gold in 1940. Their names and achievement are mostly lost to history. In Hawaii, champion swimmer Takashi “Halo” Hirose hung up his trunks and enlisted in the U.S. Navy instead. Track star Eulace Peacock, who had beaten Jesse Owens for a spot on the 1936 Olympic team


I recovered from the coronavirus. But I’m still living with its effects.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said I could come home after a five-day wait in Japan, to ensure I did not have a recurrence of symptoms, after which I would be removed from the Do Not Board list and permitted to return home to Portland, Ore. But there is still one crucial piece of the puzzle we don’t yet have: Epidemiologists still don’t know if I am immune to the coronavirus. The disease isn’t understood well enough. And I wasn’t given any particular guidance on how to behave. My husband and I are abiding by the state and federal mandates the same as everyone else. It was weird being around other people at first. In Tokyo, people dined at restaurants, shopped and took the subway. At that time, almost nobody had gone through what I had. There was no social distancing yet, let alone the lockdown that is probably inevitable. We tried not to go into crowded spaces, while still attempting to experience some of the vacation we had planned. We did a bit of sightseeing but also just rested and tried to decompress and process all that we had been through. On March 10, the CDC emailed that we could return home on a commercial flight. Because we had been on the Do Not Board list, there was a bit of a delay checking in at Haneda Airport, but officials soon reviewed our CDC note and we received our boarding passes. A customs agent at San Francisco International Airport asked me and my husband whether we had been on the Diamond Princess. Our passports must have still had a warning on them. We were escorted to a makeshift CDC checkpoint, where officials asked to see our hospital-issued immigration paperwork (which confirmed we were virus-free) and the CDC email. We made our connecting flight. Once we returned to Portland, the virus was already here. I was concerned about any stigma I might bear, not just from having contracted the virus, but for having been on the cruise ship. Once it was public that I had tested positive, I received threatening messages not to come back to the United States because people thought I would bring it back home. Our faces have been all over the news, and we were among the few people speaking about those events. It was a risk, but we believed it was important


After Tokyo Games postponement, sports look to shuffle Olympic trials, world championships

the organization said. Therein lies the tricky nature of rescheduling around the Olympics. Shuffling events set on biennial schedules could have long-term ramifications for athletes. If World Athletics moves the world championships to 2022 and then reverts to its usual odd-year schedule, track and field leaders could create a stretch in which an Olympics or world championships take place five years in a row. “Some athletes might get burned out,” 200-meter world champion Noah Lyles said. “A lot of athletes do need that year break. Personally, I think it would be a little too much. We do need some break year to do something other than go out for championships.” In addition to world championship events, USA Swimming and USA Track & Field have national Olympic trials to consider. USA Swimming said in a release Tuesday that it is working with the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee to reschedule the Olympic team trials, originally set for June 21 to June 28 in Omaha. USA Track & Field is starting work on a contingency plan now that the Games’ postponement is official. Its Olympic trials are set for June 19 to June 28 — also at the University of Oregon — and have not yet officially been canceled. “It’s going to be complicated, but a year gives us all a chance to reset,” Tim Hinchey, president and CEO of USA Swimming, said in a phone interview. “Right now we’re looking at the next 100 days and what’s realistic, what’s not. So, really, our national team cycle always starts September 1. That’s kind of our season: September to August. So right now, it’s: How do we put ourselves in position? If it’s healthy and safe, can we reset in our normal time frame and have it start over? That’s what we’re thinking about right now.” It is unclear whether the handful of athletes from both sports who have already qualified for the Tokyo Games will have to secure their spot in the Olympics again, though Han Xiao, a table tennis player who chairs the USOPC’s Athletes’ Advisory Council, has signaled that athletes want those who have already qualified to keep their status. USOPC CEO Sarah Hirshland addressed that issue in an email sent to U.S. athletes Tuesday but left open how it would be resolved. “I wish I had answers to every question out there, but the reality is this decision is


A man thought aquarium cleaner with the same name as the anti-viral drug chloroquine would prevent coronavirus. It killed him.

“Given the uncertainty around COVID-19, we understand that people are trying to find new ways to prevent or treat this virus, but self-medicating is not the way to do so,” Daniel Brooks, Banner Poison and Drug Information Center medical director, said in the hospital’s statement. “The last thing that we want right now is to inundate our emergency departments with patients who believe they found a vague and risky solution that could potentially jeopardize their health.” Online hoaxes have inaccurately and dangerously suggested drinking bleach, dousing skin with chlorine and consuming colloidal silver. They’ve also promoted largely harmless, but ultimately ineffective measures like gargling salt water, eating garlic and taking a hot bath. One confused Florida official advised the public to use hair dryers to try to kill the virus, but later apologized. The World Health Organization has busted more than a dozen myths about how to prevent, treat or cure the virus. (There is no known cure for the coronavirus. The best prevention measures are social distancing, hand-washing and avoiding touching your face, according to public health experts.) But the poisoned Arizona couple was not duped by disinformation online. Instead, they sought an at-home version of a real anti-viral drug that some early reports suggest might help fight the coronavirus. Their mistake was deadly. “There is no specific medicine recommended to prevent or treat the new coronavirus,” according to the WHO. “Some specific treatments are under investigation, and will be tested through clinical trials." The couple’s confusion over chloroquine highlights why the best thing to do if you think you might be infected or exposed to the coronavirus is call your doctor, rather than seeking treatment at home. President Trump has heralded chloroquine, perhaps in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin, as a potential “game-changer” during a briefing on the coronavirus outbreak in the United States. He also encouraged people to ask their doctors for a prescription for existing anti-viral medications like chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine and remdesivir, which are all being studied to determine whether they can help fight the coronavirus. “If you wanted, you can have a prescription,” he said last week. “What the hell do you have to lose?” Some of these anti-viral drugs have shown promise in small studies in China, France and South Korea. But the limited research has depended on small sample sizes and lacked control groups. Additional data is still needed to buttress claims the


Carnival’s CEO says cruise ships aren’t riskier for getting sick. Public health experts tell a different story.

it’s not specific to covid-19.” Henry Wu, assistant professor of infectious diseases at Emory University School of Medicine and director of the Emory TravelWell Center, told The Washington Post this month that shared facilities on ships — bathrooms and cafeterias, for example — are of concern, and that infected crew members or incomplete cleaning can extend outbreaks onto later voyages. “Cruises inherently have conditions that can promote infectious-disease spread,” he said. Donald made the comments to Axios while defending the decision to keep ships operating as long as the company did and insisting that cruise ships are not a source for coronavirus. Hundreds of passengers on at least four of the company’s ships have tested positive for the virus. “We cooperated with every protocol that was in place as people learned more about coronavirus,” he said. “We ramped up screening on the ships, we ramped up detections, we ramped up in all aspects. And so 20/20 hindsight, could everyone have done something sooner? Perhaps, but it was an evolving learning situation.” The interview came after an unprecedented couple of weeks for the cruise industry during which leaders pitched a coronavirus response plan to the government, global operators voluntarily shut down sailings for at least 30 days, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and U.S. State Department warned Americans to reschedule all cruises. And Donald’s statements aired the day before the CDC released a report on public health responses to the spread of coronavirus on cruise ships around the world in February and March. The two highest-profile outbreaks were on Carnival-owned Princess Cruises ships, but the report said confirmed cases of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, “had been associated with at least 25 additional cruise ship voyages” as of March 17. Secondary cases in communities linked to passengers who returned from cruises have also been reported, the CDC said. "Cruise ships are often settings for outbreaks of infectious diseases because of their closed environment, contact between travelers from many countries, and crew transfers between ships,” the agency said in the update Monday, published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. In another publication offering health advice to travelers, the CDC describes “a unique combination of health concerns” for cruise passengers. “Travelers from diverse regions brought together in the often crowded, semi-enclosed environments onboard ships can facilitate the spread of person-to-person, foodborne, or waterborne diseases,” the agency says.


These social policies could help the U.S. cope with the coronavirus pandemic

converged on the view that it’s inefficient to have too much “organizational slack” — meaning resources like financing, employees or supplies above the minimum required for normal functioning. But greater slack has its benefits, too: It offers greater ability to respond to crisis. The covid-19 pandemic has revealed how helpful that slack can be. The need for slack is why public health authorities want everyone to take measures to “flatten the curve”: handwashing, social distancing, canceling elective surgeries, staying home and stopping panic buying. If fewer people need care at any particular time, that gives all kinds of systems — from grocery supply chains to hospital ICUs — the slack needed to keep working despite the pandemic’s increased demands. But coping with an emergency could be easier if systems had more resilience built in. For instance, “social shock absorbers” like cash income supports, unemployment insurance, subsidized housing and health care, and publicly provided child care give household budgets a little slack. That could allow people to continue to work, or at least consume, during periods of either personal misfortune or mass disruption — thus reducing the threat of broad economic collapse. Universal paid sick leave would allow people to maintain quarantine if they become infected. The United States is nearly unique among rich democracies in lacking a national policy for paid sick leave. Without it, sick people continue to go to work, making it easier for illnesses to spread — whether that’s the common cold, a norovirus or covid-19. The slack created by paid sick leave would help them stay home. Just now, many businesses are facing disastrous prospects as demand disappears. Major airlines are at risk of shutting down by May. Countless service and small businesses are in danger, including restaurants, hairdressers, small retailers and bars. One tool for dealing with sharp downturns in demand is kurzarbeit, or short-work. After the 2008 global financial crisis, Germany allowed employers to cut employees’ hours down to one or two days a week, with government subsidies making up the rest of the salary. Denmark’s government has committed to paying 75 percent of the salaries of employees who cannot work as the pandemic affects their firms. Even the United Kingdom, with probably the least regulated labor market in Europe, has committed to paying 80 percent of employees’ salaries when they cannot work during the pandemic. Short-work policies can protect workers and help keep


Washington nursing home with deadly coronavirus cluster failed to flag illnesses, federal inspectors find

visitors on Feb. 10 because of the increase in respiratory illness and the company filing a report with authorities about it on Feb 27. Nursing homes in King County, which encompasses Kirkland, are required to report suspected influenza outbreaks — defined as any two residents suffering from acute flu symptoms and fevers — to the county within 24 hours. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention previously said that it had identified 129 cases of covid-19 associated with the Life Care home — 81 residents, 34 members of staff and 14 visitors. It found that eight other homes in King County had reported cases of covid-19. It attributed the spread to causes including a failure to recognize cases due to a “low index of suspicion,” staff working while symptomatic and staff working shifts in multiple homes. Cheryl Strange, Washington’s social and health services secretary, said on Monday that state officials were inspecting every nursing home in the state to check their preparedness for covid-19. “We have learned valuable lessons,” Strange said in a statement released by the CMS. The CMS said Monday that its inspectors had made three findings at the Kirkland home that met the level of “immediate jeopardy,” meaning that a patient’s safety had been placed in imminent danger. “Specifically, the facility’s failure to rapidly identify and manage ill residents, notify the Washington Department of Health about the increasing rate of respiratory infection among residents, and failure to possess a sufficient backup plan following the absence of the facility’s primary clinician, who fell ill,” the CMS announcement said in listing the findings. King County authorities on Monday reported 12 new deaths from covid-19, bringing the county’s total to 87. The county said there were also 130 new covid-19 cases, making the county’s total number of cases 1,170. The Life Care Center home in Kirkland is owned by Life Care Centers of America, the country’s biggest privately held nursing home company, which says that it has more than 200 facilities across 28 states. The company has annual revenue of more than $3 billion, according to an estimate by Forbes. In a video message on the company’s website before the CMS findings were published, Life Care Centers of America president Beecher Hunter said covid-19 was frightening and asked viewers to pray for the safety and wisdom of their employees. “Our staff members at every location are working hard to prevent


For NBC, an Olympics delay was best among bad outcomes

NBC has watched in recent days as the events on its spring sports schedule, from the Kentucky Derby to the Stanley Cup playoffs, have been postponed or halted indefinitely because of the novel coronavirus pandemic. But none of those changes carried the same weight as the one announced Tuesday by the International Olympic Committee — that the network’s premier television event, the 2020 Tokyo Games, will be postponed and probably be held next summer. Despite the major audible and resulting complications, television experts agree that, given the circumstances surrounding the global spread of the virus, the one-year postponement actually represented the best possible outcome for NBC — an assertion backed by the network’s own efforts to nudge the organizers of the Games in that direction. “It’s the best of all the bad options,” said Chris Bevilacqua, a sports media rights consultant who has worked with the IOC. “You’re not losing the Games, and you still get them in the summer." According to two people familiar with the conversations, executives from NBC’s parent company, Comcast, had been in touch with Olympic officials in recent days, making their scheduling preference known: They wanted the Games postponed for a year rather than a few months until this fall. Other factors contributed to the choice of the one-year delay, including international sports calendars and the uncertainty related to the spread of the virus. But NBC is an influential stakeholder in the Games. More than 70 percent of the IOC’s nearly $6 billion from the current four-year Olympic cycle comes from TV revenue, and of that TV revenue, NBC pays roughly half. In the United States, the network is paying roughly $1 billion for the broadcast rights of the 2020 Games alone. One member of the IOC said that while the considerations of television and other partners were taken into account, the decision was ultimately made based on health and safety considerations. “We never had a problem in all my dealings with television and marketing and the IOC, with the sponsors or broadcasters trying to influence decisions of that nature,” IOC member Dick Pound said. “They understand we’ll do our best and do what we can to protect their interests and positions, but we’re not going to ignore public health warnings of this nature.” The timing of the postponement is nonetheless favorable for NBC. If the Games had been delayed only until this fall, the


In the race to recognize the correct course for the Olympics, the athletes win again

“Everybody realized we still have four months to go.” The athletes, of course, noticed how quickly the pandemic was affecting more people. The athletes, of course, not only articulated the limitations they were facing in training, but highlighted what the IOC and the USOPC should have been seeing as obvious: that continuing to train could either put the athletes in danger or endanger others with whom they came into contact. “We heard your concerns, and we shared them,” USOPC CEO Sarah Hirshland wrote in a letter to athletes after Tuesday’s postponement. “I thank you for being so forthcoming with your perspectives, and also for allowing us the time to hear from your teammates across all sports before making a recommendation to the IOC.” But let’s not forget that the USOPC was hardly a leader in this regard. Yes, the organization appropriately offered a survey to 4,000 athletes, to which some 1,780 responded. The survey didn’t include what seemed to be an obvious question: Do you feel comfortable with the idea of the Olympics being held as scheduled? But at least there was engagement. Among the revelations, according to the USOPC: “Nearly two-thirds of athletes feel that continuing to train would either put their health at risk or aren’t sure if it would put their health at risk.” And yet as late as Monday night, Hirshland said in a statement to the athletes she oversees: “It’s more clear than ever that the path toward postponement is the most promising, and we encourage the IOC to take all needed steps to ensure the Games can be conducted under safe and fair conditions for all competitors. We look forward to their feedback and direction.” That’s two things: wishy and washy. Keep in mind this was roughly 24 hours after Canada said its athletes would not participate should the Games have been held this summer. In its statement — which many Canadian athletes rallied around, because their governing body clearly considered their health and safety paramount — Team Canada pointed out that continuing to train “runs counter to the public health advice which we urge all Canadians to follow.” The Olympics, like so many athletic events, are a television show. Think about why they were scheduled for July 24-Aug. 9. That’s in the soft spot of NBC’s programming schedule, before the NFL’s regular season begins. Don’t be surprised if the rescheduled Games slide right


The quiet genius of a zombie virus

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. Brady Dennis reports on the growing number of cases of the novel coronavirus in the United States. Sarah Kaplan explains the science of why this virus is so dangerous. And, Rick Maese on the Tokyo Olympics, now postponed until 2021. Read more: ‘It’s going to get bad’: As outbreak surges, nation faces tough start to a grim week. The science behind what makes this coronavirus so sneaky, deadly and difficult to defeat. The 2020 Olympics will be postponed Follow the Post’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic here. Subscribe to The Washington Post: https://postreports.com/offer


Coronavirus Digest: National Arboretum closes to public

The U.S. National Arboretum, one of Washington’s most sprawling outdoor destinations, closed to the public Tuesday. “The grounds and outdoor garden collections will be closed, and all activities and tours have been canceled until further notice,” the U.S. Agriculture Department announced. — John Woodrow Cox D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said it’s possible the city will join Virginia in closing schools for the rest of the academic year but no such decision was imminent, according to four D.C. Council members who were on a Monday afternoon call with the mayor. The mayor said she and the city Health Department are monitoring coronavirus data and whether containment measures are working before making that call. The mayor announced Friday that she was extending school closures for another month, with classes set to resume April 27. Virginia has canceled classes for the school year. That came up during a nearly two-hour call with the council on Monday. “The mayor wasn’t disagreeing with that; she was just saying we don’t need to make that announcement today,” said Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D). Representatives of the mayor’s office did not dispute the lawmakers’ characterization of the call. One person in the mayor’s office said Bowser also wants to make sure that distance learning launches successfully and that canceling the rest of the school year prematurely could send mixed messages to students. — Fenit Nirappil Manufacturers and service-sector businesses in Maryland, Virginia, the District and several neighboring states reported rapidly worsening outlooks in early March because of the pandemic and expect severe economic trouble in the coming month, according to a report from researchers at the Richmond Federal Reserve Bank. While overall activity was fairly flat for most of March in the Fed’s monthly survey of its 5th District region, businesses turned “pessimistic” as the federal government and states moved into states of emergency. The district covers Maryland, the District, Virginia, most of West Virginia and the Carolinas. “Manufacturers reported weakening local business conditions and a decrease in backlog of orders, while the indexes for demand and local business conditions for services firms registered their largest one-month declines on record,” the Richmond Fed said. — Gregory S. Schneider


The Biden campaign’s false claim a top CDC official was ‘silenced’

based at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s headquarters in Atlanta, gave a telephone briefing — not on camera — to reporters on the coronavirus outbreak. “It’s not so much a question of if this will happen anymore but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness,” she said in a clip that Klain says was the “first to raise the alarm.” One section of Messonnier’s remarks was especially stark. “I had a conversation with my family over breakfast this morning, and I told my children that while I didn’t think that they were at risk right now, we as a family need to be preparing for significant disruption of our lives,” Messonnier said. “You should ask your children’s school about their plans for school dismissals or school closures. Ask if there are plans for teleschool. I contacted my local school superintendent this morning with exactly those questions.” Messonnier’s blunt phrasing affected Wall Street. The Dow Jones industrial average slid nearly 900 points, the second day in a row coronavirus worries impacted the market. Some White House aides responded by offering more optimism. White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow, speaking on CNBC, said: “We have contained this. I won’t say airtight, but pretty close to airtight.” At the time, more than a month after the first case had been identified in the United States, only 426 people had been tested because of a problem with CDC test kits, far fewer than in other industrialized nations. On Feb. 25, there were 57 documented cases of covid-19 in the United States. (As of March 23, about four weeks later, there are more than 46,000 cases in the United States.) Various news reports indicate that President Trump, who was returning from a trip to India, was upset about the impact her remarks had on the markets. During his trip, the president claimed the outbreak was “very well under control.” The New York Times reported: The Washington Post reported: In the Biden video, Klain claims there was immediate blowback: “Starting the next day, Dr. Messonnier no longer appeared at public briefings of the White House coronavirus task force. The president and the White House sent a clear message to scientists in the government — there would be a price for speaking out and speaking up.” The video imposes question marks


Japan’s social distancing is shrinking as coronavirus fears ease. Too soon?

a member of the government’s expert advisory panel. “Now the first wave is almost under control . . . but the second wave has already started,” he said. “It is probably going to be much worse, and we are going to have more outbreaks, and some of them are going to be big.” Some critics say Japan has been deliberately burying its head in the sand, either to protect its economy from a damaging shutdown or in an ultimately unsuccessful bid to lower the chances of an Olympics postponement or cancellation. On Tuesday, the International Olympic Committee agreed with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to postpone the Olympics and Paralympics. Previously scheduled to start in July, organizers hope to stage the Games by the summer of 2021. But by rationing tests only to people with prolonged fevers and more serious symptoms, they argue, the government has undercounted the number of infections and lulled the country into a false sense of security. “The government has given an optimistic picture all along, and so people don’t have an image of it being that scary,” said Masahiro Kami, executive director at the Medical Governance Research Institute, who has been calling for more extensive testing. “That’s natural if you see just the numbers.” But Oshitani and Iwata say the government has been wise to concentrate its resources and its testing capabilities on people with more serious symptoms and that it needs to strike a balance between strict measures and sustainable ones. Each region, Iwata says, needs to make its own decision on how strict to be in imposing social distancing measures, depending on its caseload — because strict controls cannot be sustained forever and should be reserved for when they are most needed. Many people did stay home last weekend in cities such as Osaka and Kobe, where infection rates have been climbing, he said. But that doesn’t excuse what happened in Tokyo, Saitama and Sendai last weekend, critics say. They bemoan a lack of leadership from Abe, who has personally done little to drive home the importance of social distancing to the public and often seems to have taken a back-seat role to Health Minister Katsunobu Kato. “It’s situations like this where Abe has not stepped up,” said Jeff Kingston, a professor at Temple University Japan. “It’s a familiar situation during this crisis where Abe has been [missing in action].” In Tokyo, some


The U.S. has an ugly history of blaming ‘foreigners’ for disease

President Trump has doubled down on calling covid-19 the “Chinese virus,” after earlier calling it a “foreign virus.” These terms may help him increase political support for closing U.S. borders, but they also reflect a much longer history of racist and xenophobic responses to infectious epidemics. Here’s what you need to know. In 2015, the World Health Organization put regulations in place for naming a novel disease. One regulation attempts to correct previous patterns of using geographic descriptions for disease. The 1918 H1N1 influenza, for example, was generally called the Spanish flu. More recently discovered diseases have also been named for the places they were first discovered, in ways that the WHO now prohibits, including Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and West Nile virus, in large part because such names stigmatize groups of people. When diseases named by the scientific community come to be understood and disseminated in public, descriptors that link to a place, types of professions (remember legionnaires’ disease?) or contain cultural references can take on novel and stigmatizing meanings that can cause severe harm. Naming diseases is controversial and delicate. Assumptions about a disease’s origins or about the people associated with it can lead to stereotyping, stigma, and mistreatment, and can hamper public health efforts. In 1982, as what we now call the HIV/AIDS pandemic was just beginning, a New York Times article described the condition as G.R.I.D. or Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. This name associated the disease exclusively with “homosexuals,” the term the New York Times still used at the time. This had two effects. It treated gay men as responsible for the disease — and suggested the disease itself was only a problem for gay men. This had devastating effects on health responses and harmed health interventions for years. That same year President Reagan’s press secretary referred to the disease — which had by then been named A.I.D.S — as “the gay plague.” Homophobia slowed U.S. responses to the epidemic, and increased open discrimination against gay men in policing, housing, jobs and street violence. At the same time, that stigma slowed public health responses to the disease both within the gay community and outside it — leading the epidemic to spread further. The United States has a history of assigning blame for disease spread to unwanted immigrant populations, often as justifications for anti-immigration policies — in particular, targeting people of Chinese and East Asian ancestry. The


The coronavirus destroyed my business gradually, then suddenly

Thank you for your email; Unfortunately due to the coronavirus pandemic and the impact it is having on Bus travel; <name> has been laid off from <motorcoach company> temporarily. <name> is a vital member of the <company> family and will be brought back when things get back to normal. Emails like this are my life now, but they won’t be for much longer. It’s almost over — the work part of my life, that is, not the pandemic. I work for a midsize student tour operator out of Charlottesville. It’s nothing too fancy; we deliver a quality tour for what I, and I guess our many repeat customers, feel is a reasonable price. Our customers are schools from across the nation, and we’re responsible for those eighth-graders everyone else loves to hate every spring. We take these kids, your children, to Washington, D.C.; the national parks out west; the Florida Keys; and really anywhere across the nation and even the world. Just three weeks ago, we were gearing up for spring, getting those first tours on the road, dusting off the winter cobwebs for The Season, as most of us in the industry refer to it. For me, this means contracting our guides and arranging the motor coaches. These guides are all independent contractors, joining us for anything from a few hour “step on” tour (leading a hike in the Grand Canyon, for example) to multiple day “over the road” trips. Many are my friends, fellow veterans of my 15 years guiding alongside them before I took this position. The same goes for the motor coach companies; it’s a small industry, and my relationships with many of their representatives has evolved beyond simply seeing them as a supplier. It’s more than having a beer together at a conference in Cleveland. It’s becoming involved in their lives. It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment it all came crashing down. We thought we were ahead of things: preparing our staff, warning customers and most of all, urging all concerned to listen to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations. Time after time during February and early March, our account managers reassured clients that the government was not placing any travel advisories in place. In good faith, I continued to hire guides and contract with bus companies. Then it started to crumble. Like all collapses, it was uneven and chaotic. We’d finish


The quiet genius of a zombie virus

Brady Dennis reports on the growing number of cases of the novel coronavirus in the United States. Sarah Kaplan explains the science of why this virus is so dangerous. And, Rick Maese on the Tokyo Olympics, now postponed until 2021.


I have lupus. Stop hoarding the drug I need to survive.

I was 20-something and in my first professional job 17 years ago when I began to experience symptoms of lupus — the pain and swelling in my joints, the crushing fatigue, the low-grade fevers, the hair loss, the rash across my cheeks, and the painful breathing caused by pleurisy. It was a challenge to wash my hair or even open a bottle of water. I was young and healthy and had neglected to find a primary care provider in the six months I had been living in a new city. I was busy with work and dismissive of the slowly emerging symptoms. When the pain became too much to ignore one night, I went to an urgent care clinic. They ran tests, and I finally got a primary care doctor. It took a while to get the diagnosis, and in the meantime, my doctor deduced I was suffering from some type of inflammatory illness and began to treat me with steroids, which helped. An extensive work-up at the Mayo Clinic led to the diagnosis of systemic lupus erythematosus, and I was started on a drug they said would relieve my pain and protect my organs. I was diagnosed early in the disease, before organ damage, and this medication was supposed to safeguard against that outcome. It did. My symptoms vanished and I was back to feeling like my old self. Any doubts I may have had that it was the medication that relieved my symptoms disappeared when, two years later, an attempt to lower the dose resulted in a five-day hospitalization because of an infection, inflammation and concern for heart-valve damage. The drug that helped me was called hydroxychloroquine, that anti-malaria drug with which the whole world is quickly becoming familiar. President Trump said in a news conference last week that it was a “game-changer” in the fight against the coronavirus, and he repeated the assertion on Saturday in a tweet, promoting its use with azithromycin. Hydroxychloroquine is a medication commonly used to treat lupus and rheumatoid arthritis and has been shown to be efficacious in off-label treatment of other autoimmune diseases, preventing organ failure, progression of disease and possibly even death in some patients. When anecdotal news hit the airwaves that it potentially offered some benefit for covid-19 patients, there was a sudden spike in interest and, according to media and first-person pharmacist reports, a spike in prescriptions, as


The Daily 202: As Trump tires of Fauci, Birx skillfully plays the inside game in coordinating the coronavirus response

ingredient listed on a parasite treatment for fish,” NBC News reports. “The man’s wife [said] she’d watched televised briefings during which Trump talked about the potential benefits of chloroquine. … The couple — both in their 60s and potentially at higher risk for complications of the virus — decided to mix a small amount of the substance with a liquid and drink it as a way to prevent the coronavirus. … Within 20 minutes, both became extremely ill, at first feeling ‘dizzy and hot.’ … Shortly after he arrived at the hospital, her husband died. … The Arizona woman now warns others to listen to medical professionals for the best coronavirus advice.” “The U.S. has all but exhausted its supplies of two anti-malarial drugs that are being used by some doctors in the U.S. and China to treat the coronavirus,” Chris Rowland reports. “The sudden shortages of the two drugs could come at a serious cost for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis patients who depend on them to alleviate symptoms of inflammation, including preventing organ damage in lupus patients.” “The struggle is particularly acute for those whose existing ailments can be fatally exacerbated by the disease — people whose lungs have been compromised by pulmonary disorders, whose immune systems have been suppressed by chemotherapy or whose blood sugar spikes dangerously as their bodies fight even common colds,” Cleve Wootson reports. “They have become the most stringent of the social distancers, filling refrigerators and medicine cabinets and hoping that supplies last until the worst is over. Wary of hospital waiting rooms filled with coughing people, when they get sick, they are turning to self-diagnosis and, at times, simply guessing.” The number of passengers on the Grand Princess who actually have the coronavirus will remain a mystery. A growing number of U.S. passengers who were flown home after being stranded on a European cruise ship are showing flu-like symptoms. “The Life Care Center home in Kirkland, [Wash.], which has so far been associated with 37 deaths from covid-19 … also failed to ‘rapidly identify and manage ill residents’ and had no backup plan when its primary clinician became ill, according to the inspectors,” Jon Swaine reports. “The Life Care Center home in Kirkland is owned by Life Care Centers of America, the country’s biggest privately held nursing home company, which says that it has more than 200 facilities across 28 states.” “The Westport


that the mindset that was slow to recognize the problem in the first place to treat with the seriousness it deserves is still too much a part of how the president is addressing the problem.” In related news, Annie Linskey scooped that the powerful AFSCME union will endorse Biden. (Matt Viser) “Facing heavy global pressure and rising athlete dissent, the International Olympic Committee sharply reversed course Tuesday and agreed with Japanese officials that the Olympics and Paralympics will not take place this summer in Tokyo in the wake of the growing novel coronavirus pandemic. Organizers say they now hope to stage the Games by the summer of 2021,” Adam Kilgore, Rick Maese and Simon Denyer report. “Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday proposed a one-year postponement … The IOC quickly agreed that the Games would be held about one year after the previously scheduled start date, July 24. … The modern Olympics, which date from 1896, have been canceled three times (1916, 1940 and 1944) because of world wars.” At 6,077 and counting, the country has lost more people to the coronavirus than any other. “The disaster in Italy does not stem from gross government negligence. Rather, analysts say it is partly a consequence of the weeks between the emergence of the outbreak and the government decision to absolutely lock down the population. And though many in Italy now argue that their government waited too long, democracies across the West have been mulling the same decisions,” Chico Harlan, Stefano Pitrelli and Claudia Cavaliere report. “Italy has fewer acute-care beds relative to its population than South Korea or Germany, but more than Britain or the United States.” A World Health Organization official said that “we are now seeing a very large acceleration” in U.S. infections, adding that America has the potential to become the new epicenter of the crisis. In Spain, as soldiers help disinfect retirement homes hit by the virus, they have made some particularly gruesome discoveries: the abandoned dead — or dying — bodies of elderly residents. “The effort to repatriate Americans has become the main focus of the State Department as it has suspended all routine visa operations and reassigned personnel to the often-complex task of getting people out of countries as borders and airports close,” Carol Morello reports. “Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif said in a tweet that the United States is ‘impeding’ the global


One continent remains untouched by the coronavirus: Antarctica

I can’t think of anything that’s had this global, challenging nature about it,” said Michelle Rogan-Finnemore, the executive secretary of the Council of Managers of National Antarctic Programs, or COMNAP. The association, formed in 1988, offers coordination between the various national Antarctic programs. It has taken a prominent role in advising governments and sharing best practices during the coronavirus pandemic, publishing a confidential guidance on March 16. Given the close quarters and isolation on stations, infectious diseases are always a matter of concern. “It would really be a bad thing to get influenza virus, that would really make life not easy,” Heitland said, “or if you had a serious case of diarrhea on a station — then you’d need to stock up on toilet paper.” “It’s akin to living on the moon or on the way to Mars. We can’t get these people out,” said Ayton. “We can’t do a medical evacuation from our Australians stations for up to nine months” of the year. Australia and Germany confirmed they had respirators at their stations, but the British and American Antarctic programs would not answer questions about respirators in interviews. Rogan-Finnemore said COMNAP had advised national governments to make sure they had enough oxygen to treat a respiratory infection like covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Medical officers in Antarctica have plenty of reasons to worry. “If you have an infectious agent in a remote site with austere medical facilities, it will overwhelm a single doctor,” Ayton said. “We don’t have additional nurses or other trained health-care professionals.” While many countries closed their stations for winter before the outbreak reached its current intensity, McMurdo is only just finishing its summer season. Planes are still landing and taking off from the airstrip. Mike England, a press officer for the National Science Foundation, said most of the flights were departures, but some people were arriving as well. Those entering Antarctica would do so only after undergoing “isolation and testing protocols being overseen by our medical advisers,” he said. While newcomers are screened for covid-19 symptoms, they are not being tested, he said. But variations in practices between stations have raised alarms. “Anywhere there is a point of entry into the continent from a [national] program where there are high case rates, whether it is the United States, or France or Italy, or wherever, you can’t guarantee it,” Ayton said. So far, however,


finishing its summer season. Planes are still landing and taking off from the airstrip. Mike England, a press officer for the National Science Foundation, said most of the flights were departures, but some people were arriving as well. Those entering Antarctica would do so only after undergoing “isolation and testing protocols being overseen by our medical advisers,” he said. While newcomers are screened for covid-19 symptoms, they are not being tested, he said. But variations in practices between stations have raised alarms. “Anywhere there is a point of entry into the continent from a [national] program where there are high case rates, whether it is the United States, or France or Italy, or wherever, you can’t guarantee it,” Ayton said. So far, however, the closest exposure to the coronavirus anyone in Antarctica appears to have had is reading about it from afar. The stations are isolated, but satellite phones and the Internet make it easy to stay up to date with the chaos unfolding back home. “There’s a huge spectrum across the people I’ve spoken to,” said Brian of the atmosphere on Britain’s Rothera base. “Some people are of the opinion that they would like to be home soon to be with friends and family, [while] other people are of the opinion they’d kind of like to sit it out here." Italy’s Della Rovere said while his colleagues had joked they should stay in Antarctica, no one took that seriously. “Those who have family, those who have children, are quite worried,” he said. The Italian summer expedition, which Della Rovere leads, is making its way back to Italy. The group is traveling on a South Korean vessel to New Zealand, where it has been granted an exemption from mandatory quarantines for visitors. They will not arrive in New Zealand until April 9, and it isn’t clear how they will get back to Italy, as their flights have been canceled. Heitland, who has spent 14 months at Neumayer Station but is working from home in Bremerhaven, Germany, because of the outbreak, said spending a winter in Antarctica changes the way you come think about what we know as mutual responsibility. “You learn what really is important in life,” he said. “You really get to know that it’s not all about consuming things, having the newest whatever. It’s way more about being a good team, communicating and taking care of each other.”


For finely tuned Olympic athletes, a one-year postponement changes everything

A single year is an eternity to an Olympic athlete whose whole career may last less than a decade, whose athletic peak is even shorter than that and whose entire competitive life is scripted and defined by the ancient rhythms of the four-year Olympic “quad.” A 12-month pause to the Tokyo Games, from summer 2020 to summer 2021, may be a negligible blip within a modern Olympic movement that has existed for 125 years. But to an athlete whose moment is right now, Tuesday’s news of the postponement of the world’s biggest and most expensive sporting event from this July and August to sometime in 2021 in response to the novel coronavirus pandemic changes everything. “In the NFL, you have the Super Bowl every year. We wait four years for these events to come around,” American slalom canoeist and three-time Olympian Casey Eichfeld said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “It’s hard now to think we already waited four years, and now we have to wait another year. But that’s just how it has to be.” The one-year postponement of the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games will affect the world’s elite athletes in different ways. From archers to wrestlers, teenage skateboarders to 50-something equestrians, all must rethink meticulously planned training regimens, take stock of their motivation and, in many cases, assess their ability to finance another year of training for an Olympic goal that’s now one year further off. How long is one year to an Olympic athlete? Long enough for a young phenom to blossom into a world-beater, for a superstar in peak form to suffer a career-ending injury or for an aging veteran giving it one last go to realize one more year is one too many. The Olympics may just be on a one-year pause, but time marches relentlessly on. “It’s getting harder, because I’m not getting younger,” said swimmer Ryan Lochte, a 12-time Olympic medalist seeking to make his fifth U.S. Olympic team and who will turn 36 on Aug. 3, six days before the Tokyo 2020 Games would have ended. “I was ready. I was ready to go. I’m swimming amazing right now. But I’ve always had to deal with bumps in the road, and I’ve always overcome them. “So this is just another bump. … If anything, this will just p--- me off and make my fire even bigger. I’ll be more focused. I want


Losing sense of smell may be a hidden symptom of coronavirus, doctors warn

While every case is different, the telltale symptoms of the novel coronavirus have been widely agreed upon — a high fever, persistent cough or shortness of breath. In the most severe instances, those afflicted have reported confusion or difficulty breathing, and sometimes, anxiety is the most prevailing symptom of all. But a team of British ear, nose and throat doctors on Friday raised the possibility of a new indicator of the coronavirus, one they say has been observed globally, even in patients who are otherwise asymptomatic: anosmia, a condition that causes the loss of sense of smell. In a statement, they warned that adults experiencing recent anosmia could be unknown carriers of covid-19, and urged them to consider self-isolation. “All of this evidence is accumulating very rapidly, but there’s nothing yet robustly in print,” Claire Hopkins, president of the British Rhinological Society, said in an interview. “Since then, I’ve had colleagues from around the world saying: ‘That’s exactly what we’re seeing.’ They’ve been trying [to raise awareness], but it hasn’t been picked up.” Experts at the World Health Organization say they have not yet confirmed the loss of smell or taste as a symptom of the coronavirus but haven’t ruled it out. Hopkins, who published the statement along with Nirmal Kumar, the president of ENT UK, a body that represents ear, nose and throat specialists in Britain, said she was driven by recent discussions on rhinological discussion boards related to the coronavirus pandemic. There, she observed ENTs reporting a surge of reported anosmia across their patients, and even among themselves. In their statement, Hopkins and Kumar cited reports from South Korea, China, Iran and Italy, where, they wrote, “significant numbers of patients with proven covid-19 infection have developed anosmia/hyposmia,” the latter of which signals a reduced ability to detect smells. In Germany, they wrote, more than two-thirds of confirmed coronavirus cases included anosmia. And in South Korea, a country that has seen ample covid-19 testing, “30 percent of patients testing positive have had anosmia as their major presenting symptom in otherwise mild cases.” “This week, I saw nine patients that lost their sense of smell, which is unheard of in my practice,” Hopkins said. “They were almost all under 40, and they were all told not to self-isolate." Anosmia and hyposmia are historically linked to early symptoms of upper-respiratory infections — including previous strains of coronavirus — because the virus


For 2020 Olympic hopefuls, postponement is another challenge to overcome

training and ultimate goal to represent my country at the Olympic Games. It will happen and when it does we will all be stronger and be able to celebrate what is an extraordinary worldwide event together.” American gymnast Alec Yoder tweeted a six-second video of a whiteboard showing the Olympic rings and the words, “the dream / Tokyo 2020” — and a hand erasing the second 0 in 2020, replacing it with a 1. At 35, well past the point where most swimmers remain competitive, Lochte is the perfect example of an athlete for whom even a one-year postponement looms large. Under normal circumstances, he would be pointing toward the U.S. Olympic trials for swimming in Omaha in June, where he would have been competing with swimmers nearly half his age for coveted spots on Team USA. “It’s getting harder,” Lochte said, “because I’m not getting any younger." American hurdler Lolo Jones, trying to make a return to the Summer Olympics at age 37, tweeted, “Retirement will have to wait another year.” She also joked: “[S]omeone order me a damn pizza. I got another year before I gotta be ready for the games.” The IOC had been the target of widespread criticism in recent days, much of it coming from the athletes themselves, over its patient response to global concerns about the covid-19 pandemic. Jones, who competed in the 2008 and 2012 Summer Games as a hurdler and the 2014 Winter Games as a bobsledder, had been among the most vocal U.S. athletes in imploring the IOC to postpone Tokyo 2020, telling the Associated Press the indecision was “tearing athletes apart.” When the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee surveyed its athletes over the weekend, it found 65 percent of respondents said their training had been severely impacted by coronavirus-related restrictions, including 25 percent who said they could not train at all. Sixty-eight percent of the athletes said they did not think the Games could be fairly contested if they went on as scheduled this summer. “Our most important conclusion from this broad athlete response,” the USOPC said in a statement, “is that even if the current significant health concerns could be alleviated by late summer, the enormous disruptions to the training environment, doping controls and qualification process can’t be overcome in a satisfactory manner. To that end, it’s more clear than ever that the path toward postponement is the most


How the automated coronavirus testing process works in Silicon Valley

how you would do it. Kids would lose their minds. At the end, she removed the swab, put it in the bag that was affixed to my car, immediately said, “Roll up your window,” and I was on my way. Maybe took 15 minutes. How long was the line when you got there? We’re all in our cars. So how many cars were in front of me? Maybe 20. 25. But they moved it through really efficiently. I thought it was a very efficient process. It did go through my mind: I went to work after that. We’re taking protective measures at our offices. We have reduced head count, we do have access to masks and gloves, basic masking gloves and sanitizer. We’re taking precautions. But I guess the question for experts is, okay, I get that test result, which I don’t have yet — that will tell me how I was up until Sunday morning. But no one told me to quarantine after the test. That was never something I was instructed to do. I thought, what’s the value? What do we learn? We learn a little bit, probably. How do we do this on a mass scale? I have no idea. This certainly demonstrated that it can be executed very efficiently. But you know, my guess is if a massive testing regimen were something we wanted to implement, I think that would be hard to do. In general, as someone who has better-than-average knowledge of health systems and how we deliver health care, I certainly didn’t leave the experience understanding how this fit in with anything else. But I was definitely impressed by the throughput, and I was impressed by the procedures they put in place that seemed like that they were protecting their workforce. And, you know, I left — other than having a swab jammed very far up my nasal cavity, it was it was a really well-organized experience. It gave me some reassurance. Folks are anxious about the testing piece, and this is certainly a good resource. We’re fortunate to have it, and hopefully there will be more resources like this around the country. Update: A spokesperson for Verily provided a statement about the English-only requirement. “Verily removed that requirement and are actively working on translating materials into Spanish to launch in the coming weeks," it read. "We are focused on equity and are working


Tokyo Games postponement appears inevitable as countries grow impatient with IOC

talking about postponing. A lot of national Olympic committees and countries are calling for a postponement." Until Monday, Japan had insisted that the Games must go ahead as scheduled, although Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said last week that the priority must be to hold the Olympics in a “complete manner.” On Monday, he told parliament this might mean the dates would have to change. “If that is difficult, we would have no choice but to decide to postpone, with athletes as the first priority,” Abe said, underlining that an outright cancellation is not an option. Later Monday, Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee President Yoshiro Mori acknowledged it was time to consider alternatives. “What we are going to do before anything else is to start by simulating about whether we postpone one month, three months, five months, one year,” Mori said. “We need to make a simulation about the various scenarios.” Japan Olympics Minister Seiko Hashimoto said she was “glad to hear” that the IOC was not considering canceling the Games, and Mori said the IOC and Japan would like to “closely examine” the various scenarios. For athletes, ambiguity regarding postponement has led to frustration. They have continued to train as facilities have shuttered and governments have imposed restrictions. Over the weekend, USA Swimming and USA Track and Field called for the Games to be postponed, with USA Swimming specifically asking for a delay until 2021. Both federations cited protecting athletes’ physical and mental health. USA Gymnastics joined them Monday after polling athletes over the weekend. Sebastian Coe, head of World Athletics, the international governing body for track and field, responded to Bach’s letter Sunday by writing to him and saying the current schedule is “neither feasible nor desirable.” Germany on Monday became the latest country to announce that it would not send athletes to Tokyo this summer. Michael Schirp, a spokesman for the German team, said about 200 German athletes participated in a teleconference Saturday evening with the country’s top Olympic officials to voice their concerns. They were given a survey to complete, gauging their willingness to compete this summer. Their feelings were supposed to guide the German response, Schirp said, but after the IOC said a decision could take another four weeks, Alfons Hörmann, head of Germany’s Olympic committee, decided he had to act sooner. Britain subsequently joined the chorus. “If the virus continues as predicted by the Government, I


Australian sports finally decide to shut down amid coronavirus

Australia was one of the last places on Earth where professional sports still were being played this past weekend amid the novel coronavirus pandemic. On Sunday, however, the Australian Football League announced it would suspend play after this past weekend’s season openers, and on Monday the National Rugby League followed suit, suspending its season. “To say this is the most serious threat to our game in 100 years is an understatement. It is unprecedented in its impact,” AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan said. “It is unprecedented in the impact it is having on our game and the wider community, and as a community and as a code, we all need to take the unprecedented and required actions to get through this together.” The A-League, Australia’s top men’s soccer league, followed suit Tuesday, the league announced. Football Federation Australia chief executive James Johnson said the latest measures imposed by the government made it impossible for the A-League to continue. Only a few regular season rounds remained before the playoffs, and Johnson was optimistic the league could resume play. The postponement will be reviewed April 22. “As a national competition played in all parts of Australia, as well as New Zealand, mission complicated became mission impossible,” Johnson said, according to the Associated Press. The AFL previously said it would play in empty stadiums amid the pandemic, with a shortened season and shortened games, but the league was able to finish only its first round of games before shutting down. The AFL players’ union announced that its members had agreed to a 50 percent pay cut over the course of the shutdown. The NRL got through two rounds of its season before shutting down, a decision CEO Todd Greenberg called “catastrophic” and “the biggest challenge the game will ever face financially." Peter V’landys, chairman of the Australian Rugby League Commission, said the league could lose $13 million worth of broadcast revenue for every round of games that aren’t played, or $500 million for the entire season. However, the league could continue to play through December to make up for the postponed games instead of wrapping up as usual in October. On Sunday On Sunday, the Australian Olympic Committee instructed its athletes to prepare for the Olympics in 2021 instead of this summer in anticipation of the Tokyo Games being postponed.


Coronavirus adds peril to the already at-risk: ‘If I get this stuff, it’s going to kill me.’

disinfecting his shrinking world, hoping to avoid the deadly coronavirus at all costs. The 71-year-old retired educator has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which has left him with 50 percent of his lung capacity and an increased risk of dying of the coronavirus. He spends most of each day tethered to an oxygen concentrator by a breathing tube. The most dire coronavirus warnings, he realizes, are aimed directly at him. “I’m pretty sure if I get this stuff it’s going to kill me,” he said. “I used to laugh at people who washed their hands after, say, touching a doorknob. Now, it’s like everything is radioactive. . . . I hate thinking about dying, but I know I’m in a high-risk group. Double high risk. Triple.” As the coronavirus ravaged Italy and the first cases cropped up in America, Downs and his wife approached life with the compulsiveness of germaphobic doomsday preppers. They stocked up on groceries — using a supermarket service that delivered straight to their car, not risking a trip inside. They arranged to have everything else they and their two Australian shepherds need delivered to their porch in Colonial Heights, Va. They washed their produce in the kitchen sink with soap and water, and scrubbed the containers the other groceries arrived in, letting it all air dry on the front porch. They’ve revived the ancient art of canning. Perishables that can’t be crammed into jars are stuffed into the freezer. Downs has not read a completely dry newspaper in weeks. Every morning, just after unwrapping it with gloved hands, he blasts it with disinfectant spray. Even with the extreme antimicrobial measures, he worries about things beyond his control. His home is stocked with medicine and machines to help him breathe. But soon, he believes, a lot more people will need that medicine and those machines. If his oxygen concentrators break or his breathing tubes wear out, will he be able to get replacements? What if the factories that make his medications close because too many people are sick? “The things that worry me the worst, mostly, is probably catching it,” he said. “But after that, supply chain disruptions. I can see, in the foreseeable future, problems up and down the supply chain. Not just my strawberries and my ice cream. Who’s going to drive the trucks that deliver the medicine?” He estimates he has bought his family 90


Sidelined athletes use their platforms and free time to raise money for coronavirus relief

With sports on hold amid the novel coronavirus outbreak, athletes around the world suddenly have an unfamiliar abundance of free time. Soccer players are juggling toilet paper rolls. Some athletes have posted videos of makeshift at-home workouts. But many of these stars have also turned toward their massive followings to kick-start fundraisers aimed at helping communities affected by the coronavirus. Zlatan Ibrahimovic — the Swedish striker who plays for A.C. Milan in Serie A, Italy’s top flight — started a GoFundMe for Humanitas hospitals in Italy. In five days, Ibrahimovic’s effort has raised more than $300,000. Italy is among the countries hit hardest by the coronavirus. The country imposed a national lockdown two weeks ago, but its number of cases and death toll continue to soar. More than 5,400 people have died in Italy, which recently surpassed China as the country with the highest death toll. “Italy has always given me so much, and in this dramatic moment, I want to give back even more to this country that I love,” said Ibrahimovic, who has also played for Serie A clubs Juventus and Inter Milan. “It’s a serious issue, and we need concrete help that is not just about a video,” Ibrahimovic said in the minute-long clip tweeted to more than 6 million followers in both English and Italian. “I count on the generosity of my colleagues, of all professional athletes and of those who want to make a small or large donation, according to their possibilities, to kick this virus away.” In the United States, where the number of cases has climbed to more than 40,000, athletes have launched similar efforts in recent days. Rex Chapman, the former Kentucky basketball star who had a 12-year NBA career, encouraged followers Sunday evening to donate to a coronavirus relief fund that will provide aid to organizations across the country. Chapman already has a namesake foundation that raises money to help those with opioid addition, which Chapman once struggled with. “Not long ago I lived in my car for a little while. It took a lot of people to help get me back on my feet. I’m very grateful, very fortunate for all of that help,” Chapman said in a video he tweeted to more than half a million followers. “Going to be a lot of people affected by covid-19, a lot of people in need over the next few months.” “I


Ohio State football coach Ryan Day discusses mental health during uncertain times

on a more specific and personal topic: mental health. Day, who is heading into his second season as the Buckeyes’ coach, has been a vocal advocate for mental health awareness. This past summer, his family launched the Christina and Ryan Day Fund for Pediatric and Adolescent Mental Wellness at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus. As part of that announcement, Day said publicly for the first time that his dad died by suicide in 1988. Day was 9 at the time. “I hope we win a lot of games; that’s part of the job at Ohio State,” Day said in a Yahoo Sports story in August, before he led the Buckeyes to the Big Ten championship and the College Football Playoff. “But you want to have a bigger impact than that when you’re done. You want to leave a legacy behind. You want to make change.” Day offered suggestions in a two-minute video posted to Twitter on Sunday for how to stay mentally healthy during the coronavirus outbreak, which for many Americans has led to quarantines and limited interaction with others. “In this time, there’s a lot of newness going on, and for a lot of us, a lot of stress and uncertainty,” Day said in the video. Day recommended spending time outdoors while still adhering to social distancing guidelines. He emphasized the importance of moving around and getting exercise. Day then shared the “win the moment” philosophy that the Ohio State coaches talk about with their players, urging them to focus on the present. “If you think about the past, you get frustrated,” he said. “If you look too far in the future, you just get anxious and worried.” Day encouraged those suffering from mental illness to continue getting the medication and treatment they need. He said everyone should do what they can to stay connected with others to create a “community feel” despite quarantines. “We’re going to work through this,” Day said. “There is light at the end of the tunnel.” Read more: Sidelined athletes use their platforms and spare time to raise money for coronavirus relief March Madness should have started Thursday. This is how sports fans are coping. After IOC bends, Japan finally starts to plan for Olympics postponement Olympic gold medalist says covid-19 is ‘by far the worst virus’ he has ever had Think you miss live sports? Media companies feel your pain. And then some.


USA Gymnastics calls for postponement of Tokyo Olympics

With many elite U.S. gymnasts favoring a delay, USA Gymnastics on Monday added its voice to that of USA Swimming and USA Track and Field in calling for the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics, scheduled to start July 24, because of the risk posed by the novel coronavirus. USA Gymnastics President and CEO Li Li Leung said the governing body would ask the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee to advocate that the International Olympic Committee delay the Games until they can be safely held. The request won’t specify a preferred timetable. “This pandemic affects the entire world, and everyone’s health and safety should always be first,” Leung told reporters in a conference call. USA Gymnastics is the United States’ third major sports governing body to call for a delay of the 2020 Games because of the virus’s health risks and the upheaval it has created in athletes’ training. On Friday, USA Swimming asked for a one-year delay; soon after, executives of USA Track and Field requested a delay of unspecified duration. Later Monday, the USOPC called for a postponement as well. Swimming, track and field, and gymnastics are the most watched summer Olympic sports and the most lucrative and influential in IOC decision-making. In raising their voices, the sports’ American governing bodies made a powerful statement that the Games should not be held as scheduled. Before taking a public position on the question, USA Gymnastics polled its men’s and women’s national teams to gauge their sentiments. The athletes were asked whether they favored postponing the Olympics and, if so, how far out they felt they should be postponed. The options presented on the survey were three to four months, one year or “other.” About 80 percent of the roughly 70 national team members responded. Of those, 62 percent were in favor of postponing the Games, while 38 percent wanted them to be held as scheduled, Leung said. Of the 62 percent in favor of a postponement, most favored a one-year delay rather than a three- to four-month delay, while other athletes suggested different timetables. Because the survey was anonymous, there was no way to tell whether the top prospects for making the high-profile U.S. women’s artistic gymnastics team for Tokyo, led by 23-year-old Simone Biles, take a different view than male trampolinists, for example. Leung said that in terms of reasons cited by those favoring a delay, many mentioned health


Olympic gold medalist says covid-19 is ‘by far the worst virus’ he has ever had

Cameron van der Burgh, the South African swimmer who won a gold medal in the 2012 London Olympics, is the picture of health, but he described the novel coronavirus, which he has had for two weeks, as “by far the worst virus” he has ever had. Now retired from competitive swimming, van der Burgh, 31, wrote on Twitter on Sunday that he had come down with the virus 14 days earlier and reminded his Twitter followers “it’s no joke” as he described his battle with the illness. “By far the worst virus I have ever endured despite being a healthy individual with strong lungs (no smoking/sport), living a healthy lifestyle and being young (least at risk demographic),” he tweeted. Van der Burgh, who won the 100-meter breaststroke in the Summer Games eight years ago, is recovering — slowly. “Although the most severe symptoms (extreme fever) have eased, I am still struggling with serious fatigue and a residual cough that I can’t shake,” he wrote. “Any physical activity like walking leaves me exhausted for hours.” He described a “loss in body conditioning [that] has been immense” and added that he can “only feel for the athletes that contract covid-19 as they will suffer a great loss of current conditioning through the last training cycle.” In particular, he cited athletes who are attempting to train for the Summer Olympics, still set to take place in July in Tokyo. What do you want in an Olympics newsletter? Take our 30-second survey. “Athletes will continue to train as there is no clarification re summer Games and thus are exposing themselves to unnecessary risk,” he wrote, “and those that do contract will try [to] rush back to training most likely enhancing/extending the damage/recovery time." He concluded his threaded message with a plea: “Please, look after yourself everyone! Health comes first — Covid-19 is no joke!”