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| Health workers are seen by a car at a new drive-through coronavirus disease testing centre at the South Beach Psychiatric Centre in the Staten Island borough of New York City, New York |
US officials planned to warn Americans not to travel outside the country due to the coronavirus pandemic, a federal official said on Thursday, as health authorities nationwide scrambled to step up testing for the disease.
The fast-spreading respiratory illness has disrupted life across the country, shuttering schools and businesses and leaving millions to work from home or out of work, hammering the economy and disrupting travel.
The travel warning would also advise Americans currently abroad to come home or to shelter in place, the official said.
New York State tested more than 7,500 patients overnight and ordered three-quarters of state employees to work from home, while the governor of neighboring New Jersey warned that he expected the number of cases in the state to spiral into the thousands.
A new drive-through testing site is due to open on Friday at a community college in New Jerseyโs Bergen County with the capacity to collect 2,500 specimens per week, significantly ramping up the stateโs ability to test its residents.
New Jersey health commissioner Judy Persichilli said she expected the number of cases to โrise exponentiallyโ in step with wider testing, and said officials may not be able ultimately to reduce the number of people who become infected.
The goal, she said, was to spread the cases out โso that fewer people need to seek treatment at any given time,โ lightening the load on hospitals and healthcare workers and giving the system more time to respond.
More than 10,000 people across the United States have been diagnosed with the illness called Covid-19 and more than 160 have died, with the largest numbers so far in Washington state and New York.
The US Senate was aiming to unveil details of a $1 trillion-plus coronavirus bill on Thursday intended to help the US economy weather the impacts of the growing outbreak. President Donald Trump has been eagerly calling for that package.
It would be Congressโ third emergency coronavirus bill following a $105 billion-plus plan covering free coronavirus testing, paid sick leave and expanded safety-net spending, and an $8.3 billion measure to combat the spread of the highly contagious pathogen and develop vaccines.
There are currently no approved treatments or vaccines for Covid-19, but several options are being tested.
The plunging stock market and surging death toll has caused Trump to sharply change his tone on the disease this week, demanding urgent action after spending weeks downplaying the risks.
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, the Republican chairman of the National Governors Association, said governors were holding a phone call with Trump on Thursday to demand action.
โWe need all levels of government working together to get through this crisis,โ he said. Top of the governorsโ list is a request for 50% of any new emergency funding to go directly to the states. They also want increased supply of test kits, ventilators and other medical kit.
FLIGHTS HALTED
Some 500 flights were canceled after an air-traffic controller who worked at Las Vegas International Airport was presumed to have Covid-19, prompting the Federal Aviation Administration to order the control tower shut.
With the United States slow to roll out mass testing for the virus that has infected more than 229,000 people worldwide, officials fear the number of known cases of the respiratory illness that can lead to pneumonia lags far behind reality.
With more than 9,300 deaths worldwide so far, the fast-spreading epidemic has stunned the world and drawn comparisons with traumatic periods such as World War Two, the 2008 financial crisis and the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.
US stock markets, after initially falling again, reversed course, with the Dow Jones industrial average up more than 2 per cent on Thursday afternoon.
But the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits surged by the most since 2012 to a 2-1/2-year high last week, as companies in the services sectors laid off workers with businesses shutting down due to the pandemic.
One sector where employees were busy โ and unable to work from the safety of home โ was the nationโs 3 million janitors, housekeepers and maids, who are on the front line of the war against the virus, often working overnight and weekends to deep clean offices, airports and hotels.
โEveryone is scared,โ said Ali, who works for ABM, a maintenance and cleaning firm that employs more than 140,000 people. โWe just keep going, letโs do what we can.โ
Chicago, the nationโs third-largest city, on Thursday ordered all residents who have been confirmed to have coronavirus or who are showing symptoms to stay home.
โThis move may seem severe to some but in this highly evolving situation itโs absolutely what we need to do at this time as we work to contain this outbreak,โ Dr Allison Arwady, the cityโs public health commissioner, said in a statement.
REUTERS
