AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT
World virus deaths pass 100,000, with New York area hit hard
NEW YORK (AP) — The worldwide death toll from the coronavirus surged past 100,000 Friday as the epidemic in the U.S. cut a widening swath through not just New York City but the entire three-state metropolitan area of 20 million people connected by a tangle of subways, trains and buses.
In the bedroom communities across the Hudson River in New Jersey, to the east on Long Island and north to Connecticut, officials were recording some of the worst outbreaks in the country, even as public health authorities expressed optimism that the pace of infections appeared to be slowing.
As of Friday, the New York metropolitan area accounted for more than half the nation's over 18,000 deaths, with other hot spots in places such as Detroit, Louisiana and Washington, D.C.
“Once it gets into the city, there are so many commuters and travel, it gets everywhere," said Matt Mazewski, a Columbia University economics student who tried to get away from the epicenter by leaving his apartment near the New York City campus for his parents' house in Long Valley, New Jersey.
Worldwide, the number of deaths hit another sad milestone, as tallied by Johns Hopkins University, while confirmed infections reached about 1.7 million.
___
What you need to know today about the virus outbreak
The worldwide death toll from the coronavirus hit 100,000 on Friday as Christians around the globe marked a Good Friday unlike any other — in front of computer screens instead of in church pews. The U.S. had over 18,000 dead, putting it on track to overtake Italy for the country with the highest death toll.
Public health officials and religious leaders alike warned people against violating lockdowns and social distancing rules over Easter and allowing the virus to come storming back. Authorities resorted to roadblocks and other means to discourage travel.
With economies hit hard by the pandemic, some governments faced mounting pressure to restart some industries and fend off further economic devastation from the coronavirus.
Here are some of AP’s top stories Friday on the world’s coronavirus pandemic. Follow APNews.com/VirusOutbreak for updates through the day and APNews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak for stories explaining some of its complexities.
___
___
Tracking NYC's coronavirus fight, from 911 call to ER door
NEW YORK (AP) — The coronavirus crisis is taxing New York City’s 911 system like never before.
Operators pick up a call every 15.5 seconds. Panicked voices tell of loved ones in declining health. There are multitudes of cardiac arrests and respiratory failures and others who call needing reassurance that a mere sneeze isn't a sign they've been infected.
The system is so overwhelmed, the city has started sending text and tweet alerts urging people to only call 911 “for life-threatening emergencies.”
As the city staggered through its deadliest week of the pandemic, its emergency response system and army of operators, dispatchers and ambulance crews is being pushed to the brink.
The fire department said it has averaged more than 5,500 ambulance requests each day — about 40% higher than usual, eclipsing the total call volume on Sept. 11, 2001.
___
Analysis: Virus shows benefit of learning from other nations
In 1910, when a contagious pneumonic plague was ravaging northeastern China, a physician there concluded that the disease traveled through the air. So he adapted something he had seen in England. He began instructing doctors, nurses, patients and members of the public to wear gauze masks.
That pioneering of masks by Dr. Wu Lien-teh, a Cambridge-educated modernizer of Chinese medicine, is credited with saving the lives of those around him. A French physician working with Wu, however, rejected putting on a mask. He perished within days.
More than a century later, now that the new coronavirus has spread across the United States and claimed more than 16,000 lives, some scholars and health system experts are shaking their heads that lessons from other countries were not learned in time to help Americans reduce the toll of the pandemic within their borders.
“No matter how long I live, I don’t think I will ever get over how the U.S., with all its wealth and technological capability and academic prowess, sleepwalked into the disaster that is unfolding,” says Kai Kupferschmidt, a German science writer.
His comment came as the United States was surging past 100,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus, facing a critical lack of ventilators, masks and testing. Now it is more than 400,000. The Trump administration says its approach has been proactive and, thus far, effective, and has blamed others for any missteps.
___
Groups used to serving desperately poor nations now help US
In Santa Barbara, forklifts chug through the warehouse of Direct Relief, hustling pallets of much-needed medical supplies into waiting FedEx trucks. Normally those gloves, masks and medicines would go to desperately poor clinics in Haiti or Sudan, but now they’re racing off to Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, California and the Robert Wood Johnson Hospitals in New Jersey.
Direct Relief is just one of several U.S. charities that traditionally operate in countries stricken by war and natural disaster that are now sending humanitarian aid to some of the wealthiest communities in America to help manage the coronavirus pandemic.
“We are responding to the greatest unmet needs,” said Direct Relief CEO Thomas Tighe.
He is organizing flights of supplies directly from the group’s own manufacturers in China to the Santa Barbara warehouse, and also coordinating shipments from other producers around the world. After spending two decades providing relief to disaster zones, Tighe exudes a calm in the midst of this emergency.
The medical charity Doctors Without Borders spent months fighting coronavirus around the world and is now trying to save lives just down the street from their New York offices. The group is supporting soup kitchens, setting up hand-washing stations, and training local officials how to prevent the spread of infection. Samaritan's Purse International erected a 14-tent field hospital with an ICU in Central Park.
___
1st results in on Gilead coronavirus drug; more study needed
More than half of a group of severely ill coronavirus patients improved after receiving an experimental antiviral drug, although there’s no way to know the odds of that happening without the drug because there was no comparison group, doctors reported Friday.
The results published by the New England Journal of Medicine are the first in COVID-19 patients for remdesivir. The Gilead Sciences drug has shown promise against other coronaviruses in the past and in lab tests against the one causing the current pandemic, which now has claimed more than 100,000 lives.
No drugs are approved now for treating the disease. At least five large studies are testing remdesivir, and the company also has given it to more than 1,700 patients on a case-by-case emergency basis.
Friday’s results are on 53 of those patients, ages 23 to 82, hospitalized in the United States, Europe, Canada and Japan. Thirty-four of them were sick enough to require breathing machines.
All were given the drug through an IV for 10 days or as long as they tolerated it.
___
A funeral director fights for New York's coronavirus dead
NEW YORK (AP) — Jesus Pujols has fetched the deceased from emergency rooms. He has stepped over bodies in refrigerated trailers. The funeral homes he serves are storing remains by the dozen, often in chapels chilled by cranked-up air conditioners.
The 23-year-old funeral director is sleeping some nights in his minivan — the same one he uses to transport the dead. He thinks he worked nearly 80 hours last week, but he hasn’t really kept count.
“Right now, money is not worth it. It’s not worth it,” he said. “I would give up my job any day for like a normal, normie job. I’d much rather be quarantined in my house right now.”
___
The Associated Press followed 10 New York City residents on Monday, April 6, as they tried to survive another day in the city assailed by the new coronavirus. For more, read 24 Hours: The Fight for New York.
___
Summer camps facing rocky start, uncertain future
NEW YORK (AP) — For 17-year-old Morgan Carney, missing her seventh summer at overnight camp in the Ozarks would be worse than what she's feeling now in isolation without her school friends and usual slate of activities.
“She says she can’t even think about not going to camp this summer or she’ll be depressed,” said her mother, Amy Carney. “Her best friends in life are her camp friends.”
So far, so good for the Phoenix teen. Her camp in Branson, Missouri, has made no plans to cancel. But other kids looking forward to new or beloved summer programs haven't been so lucky.
Some camps have already notified families they won't open due to the coronavirus crisis. Most, however, are in wait-and-see mode.
“Right now it’s such a dynamic situation,” said Tom Rosenberg, president and CEO of the American Camp Association. “The camps themselves are trying to be adaptable and flexible as more information becomes available.”
___
NOT REAL NEWS: A week of false news around the coronavirus
A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:
CLAIM: Tonic water or quinine supplements can be used to prevent or treat coronavirus symptoms.
THE FACTS: Medical experts say as of now there is no proven medication or home remedy that can cure coronavirus. Posts circulating on Facebook and Twitter suggest that drinking tonic water from Schweppes or Fever-Tree will work to treat the new coronavirus because the drinks contain quinine. Quinine is a compound found in the bark of the Cinchona tree and has been used to treat malaria. Malaria drugs like chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are the synthetic form of quinine. “I would not encourage anyone to drink tonic water to prevent or treat covid at all,” said Dr. Michael Angarone, assistant professor of infectious diseases at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Social media users appear to be suggesting there is no difference between quinine and hydroxychloroquine, which has been touted by President Donald Trump as a treatment for coronavirus. Hydroxychloroquine has not been approved as a drug to treat coronavirus and medical experts have not concluded whether the drug is safe or effective for this use. “The data so far in terms of therapeutic efficacy are pretty shaky,” said Dr. David Hamer, a professor at Boston University School of Public Health and School of Medicine and physician at Boston Medical Center. Other posts tout a combination of tonic water and zinc, an idea that gained traction after a St. Louis chiropractor posted a video recommending the combination. Experts say there is no scientific evidence that quinine would have any impact if used in this way. The concentration used for medical use is different from the concentration of quinine used in soft drinks, said Dr. Humberto Choi, a pulmonologist at Cleveland Clinic. As far as taking tonic water and zinc, Choi said while zinc has been studied to see if it could help protect organs against low oxygen supply in cases of severe lung infection or inflammation, it has not been proven to treat the infection itself. “I don’t think people should be fooled to think they are ingesting something that is causing any benefit to them,” he said. Tonic water companies like Fever-Tree are debunking the myth online. “We would not advise using our tonic water for anything other than making a tasty drink to keep your spirits up during this difficult time,” the company states on its website.
___
CLAIM: Maps show a correlation between confirmed COVID-19 cases and locations where 5G wireless service has been installed.
___
The howling: Americans let it out from depths of pandemic
DENVER (AP) — It starts with a few people letting loose with some tentative yelps. Then neighbors emerge from their homes and join, forming a roiling chorus of howls and screams that pierces the twilight to end another day’s monotonous forced isolation.
From California to Colorado to Georgia and upstate New York, Americans are taking a moment each night at 8 p.m. to howl in a quickly spreading ritual that has become a wrenching response of a society cut off from one another by the coronavirus pandemic.
They howl to thank the nation’s health care workers and first responders for their selfless sacrifices, much like the balcony applause and singing in Italy and Spain. Others do it to reduce their pain, isolation and frustration. Some have other reasons, such as to show support for the homeless.
In Colorado, Gov. Jared Polis has encouraged residents to participate. Children who miss their classmates and backyard dogs join in, their own yowls punctuated by the occasional fireworks, horn blowing and bell ringing.
“There’s something very Western about howling that’s resonating in Colorado. The call-and-response aspect of it. Most people try it and love to hear the howl in return,” said Brice Maiurro, a poet, storyteller and activist who works at National Jewish Health.