NPR

Animal shelters across the country have had to close their doors as part of the effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Fearing the arrival of new litters and abandoned animals with no one to adopt them, they are racing to empty kennels before they are forced to resort to euthanasia.

“Every industry in the world right now is going through a massive disruption, and animal sheltering and animal rescues are no exception to that,” says Julie Castle, the chief executive officer of Best Friends Animal Society, an advocacy group that works with more than 3,000 shelters.

Many of these shelters have moved into crisis mode.

The number of coronavirus deaths in the United States has sharply accelerated in recent days, now exceeding 2,000, marking a doubling of the fatality rate in the span of two days.

As of Sunday afternoon, more than 2,300 people in the U.S. have died from the virus and more than 135,000 people in the U.S. have been infected, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The exponential growth in cases and deaths falls in line with some predictive models that suggest that in the coming weeks, the U.S. could begin to see death tolls in the thousands every day.

The federal government is throwing $2 trillion at the coronavirus problem. Banks and other lenders are doing things to assist people on top of that. Here’s your survival kit for how to get the help that’s available and be in the best financial shape possible as you weather this storm.

Two weeks ago, President Trump entered the White House briefing room and announced an aggressive plan to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

For 15 days, stay home, he told Americans. Avoid groups of more than 10 people. “If everyone makes this change, or these critical changes, and sacrifices now, we will rally together as one nation and we will defeat the virus,” he said.

On Sunday, the night before Day 15, Trump told the country to stick with the plan for another month, until April 30.

President Trump has signed a historic $2 trillion economic recovery package into law Friday afternoon, shortly after the House of Representatives approved the bill.

In an Oval Office ceremony Friday, the president thanked Republicans and Democrats “for coming together, setting aside their differences and putting America first” to pass the legislation. Trump was joined by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy. No Democrats were present at the signing.

The package will offer relief to state and local governments, individuals, small and large businesses, and hospitals affected by the coronavirus crisis.

Read the rest: How To Turn Your Home Into A School Without Losing Your Sanity

The coronavirus appears to be much more lethal in some countries than in others.

In Italy, about 10% of people known to be infected have died. In Iran and Spain, the case fatality rate is higher than 7%. But in South Korea and the U.S. it’s less than 1.5%. And in Germany, the figure is close to 0.5%.

So what gives?

A spate of mysterious second-time infections is calling into question the accuracy of COVID-19 diagnostic tools even as China prepares to lift quarantine measures to allow residents to leave the epicenter of its outbreak next month. It’s also raising concerns of a possible second wave of cases.

From March 18-22, the Chinese city of Wuhan reported no new cases of the virus through domestic transmission — that is, infection passed on from one person to another. The achievement was seen as a turning point in efforts to contain the virus, which has infected more than 80,000 people in China. Wuhan was particularly hard-hit, with more than half of all confirmed cases in the country.

But some Wuhan residents who had tested positive earlier and then recovered from the disease are testing positive for the virus a second time. Based on data from several quarantine facilities in the city, which house patients for further observation after their discharge from hospitals, about 5%-10% of patients pronounced “recovered” have tested positive again.

Fausto Russo is a 38-year-old fitness trainer. He has been hospitalized with COVID-19 in Latina, south of Rome, for over two weeks. On Wednesday, he spoke to NPR and other international news media by video.

“I run a fitness center, I train soccer teams, I’m a physical therapist,” Russo says.“I never smoked, my last fever was 10 years ago. Suddenly I’m catapulted onto a hospital bed, unable to breathe.”

In his first week at the Santa Maria Goretti Hospital, medical staff gave him and an IV drip and a type of helmet to help him breathe. He was bed-ridden, unable to move, eat or drink.

“It is hard to imagine, time never passes,” Russo says. “Your body can’t find the right position to sleep. It’s so intense, I’ll never forget it.”

The U.S. now has more coronavirus cases than any other country in the world, surpassing China’s total and highlighting how rapidly the virus can move through a population.

The U.S. logged more than 83,000 cases as of 8 p.m. ET Thursday, while China reported more than 81,00 infections, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

America now leading the world in coronavirus cases is striking since the U.S. population of some 330 million is just a fraction of China’s 1.4 billion people.

Over a thousand people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19, and over a third of those deaths have taken place in New York. Nearly half the confirmed cases in the United States are in New York. The state has become a coronavirus hotspot — anyone leaving New York City is being asked to self-quarantine for two weeks.

A key adviser to President Trump, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, says other states need to prepare to take on outbreaks of this scale.

NPR’s Noel King spoke with Dr. Fauci about where the U.S. is headed, and what strategies may help stop the spread of the coronavirus. He weighed in on increased testing capacity in the U.S. and on President Trump’s comment that he hopes to see the economy reopen by Easter. That, according to Fauci, remains to be seen.

The coronavirus has infected more than 450,000 people worldwide, and now cybersecurity experts are warning the pandemic could take a toll on computer systems, as well.

Many companies that usually handle sensitive information in their offices are now telling employees to work from home. And that can make them more vulnerable to hackers — especially if workers browse certain websites they wouldn’t visit when the boss is watching.

In other words, porn.

Not enough toilets – and the ones there are often dirty. Beds crammed together. The only way to shower is with water from a bucket that everyone has to share. No soap or hand sanitizer.

People who’ve been quarantined in India for suspected exposure to coronavirus say conditions inside government facilities are unsanitary and unsafe — ripe to foment an outbreak rather than prevent one. Indians are posting photos and videos on social media of dirty sheets, broken toilets and trash littering crowded quarantine centers.

The World Health Organization says the arc of the global pandemic may depend on what huge, densely-populated countries like India do next.

For the past 16 months, Angelo Mike has been living in his beige Toyota Camry in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley. It’s difficult for obvious reasons: no bed, no kitchen, no bathroom. But, Mike says, structure and organization make it manageable.

Until recently, his daily routine involved waking up by 6:00 a.m. most mornings and heading to a nearby gym. There he’d exercise and shower. If he didn’t need to be on set — Mike works as a crew member on movie sets — he’d head to the library after the gym to work on his laptop and search for new gigs.

Then came the coronavirus. “Basically the only place I go now is the park,” Mike says.

Weekly jobless claims hit nearly 3.3 million last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s staggering when you consider that at the height of the Great Recession, initial claims topped out at just shy of 700,000.

The CARES Act (short for Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act) that the Senate passed Wednesday night is set to provide $2 trillion in economic aid as the nation braces for this massive economic blow.

“Nobody thinks legislation can end this. We cannot outlaw the virus. And no economic policy can fully end the hardship so long as the public health requires that we put so much of our commerce on ice,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday. “This isn’t even a stimulus package. It is emergency relief.”

A record 3.28 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week as the coronavirus pandemic shut down much of the country. The Labor Department’s report Thursday was one of the first official indicators of how many people have suddenly been forced out of work nationally.

“This marks the highest level of seasonally adjusted initial claims in the history of the seasonally adjusted series,” the department said. “The previous high was 695,000 in October of 1982.” The Labor Department’s records go back to 1967.

As the COVID-19 pandemic intensifies, some communities will be better equipped to treat the sickest patients — specifically those requiring admission to intensive care units — than others. Not only do ICU capabilities vary from hospital to hospital, but also some parts of the country have far more critical care beds by population than others.

An NPR analysis of data from the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice looked at how the nation’s 100,000 ICU beds are distributed across the more than 300 markets that make up the country’s hospital system.

ESPN has gone from gearing up for March Madness to featuring marble racing.

As the coronavirus shuts down Broadway, bars, bowling alleys and more, consider the predicament of cable giant ESPN: The self-proclaimed “worldwide leader in sports” is now operating in a world where there are nearly no live sports.

Under the brand The Ocho, ESPN has been presenting viewers with past contests in cherry pit spitting, marble racing, Sasquatch calling and lifting heavy stones above your head. (Seriously. I’m not making those last two up.)

For almost two weeks now, NPR Music has been meeting via video conference, just like millions of Americans and folks all over the world. Our office attire is pretty laid back, but working from home, we’re all about sweats and T-shirts.

This situation got me thinking about the Tiny Desk’s dress code. If you are a fan of the series, you know that most musicians dress comfortably. Occasionally, you’ll see a funky coat or a dapper suit, but most wear regular street clothes.

But some musicians really class up the space. SsingSsing brought gender-bending bling inspired by Korean traditional art, Kenyan-born J.S. Ondara dressed in a sharply-tailored pink suit and Adele kept it classic with a black overcoat, knee high boots, tights, gloves and a modest pocketbook. Jorja Smith’s whole look was clean and fresh with beautiful braids, small gold hoops and a halter pantsuit in orange plaid.

As the coronavirus has spread to every state in the U.S., governors are taking a range of escalating steps to try to stop the spread.

A number of state leaders have issued sweeping restrictions, including stay-at-home orders.

Others have issued directives focusing on counties in which cases are thought to be spreading through communities.

The measures taken show how the coronavirus has affected the many institutions of daily life, including schools, businesses, hospitals, nursing homes and prisons.

Here’s a look at how leaders in each state have been trying to contain the highly contagious disease in recent days:

Coronavirus home cooking is now a part of American life.

Many restaurants across the U.S. are empty. Grocery store shelves are often bare. And in recent days, amateur cooks have posted about their improvised, less-than-delectable quarantine dinners — dishes including hot dogs with strawberry jam, fish fingers and custard and, as one Twitter user confessed, microwaved cheese on a plate, with barbecue sauce.

But in case you’re clueless in the kitchen during this era of coronavirus, chef and Food Network star Amanda Freitag has shared some ideas with NPR.

Senate leaders have struck a historic deal to inject the U.S. economy with about $2 trillion in aid in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The deal comes after days of intense negotiations and false starts between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

McConnell, R-Ky., and Schumer, D-N.Y., announced news of a breakthrough on the Senate floor shortly after 1:30 a.m. Wednesday.

“This is a wartime level of investment into our nation,” McConnell said. “The men and women of the greatest country on Earth are going to defeat this coronavirus and reclaim our future, and the Senate is going to make sure they have the ammunition they need to do it.”

With just about 500,000 employers, the United States Postal Services is one of the country’s largest employers, but many workers say they’re not receiving the training or supplies they need to deal safely with the coronavirus. They fear becoming carriers of another kind — catching and unwittingly spreading the virus.

“The management isn’t giving us gloves. They’re not providing hand sanitizer, and there’s no place on the street for us to wash our hands every so often,” says Beth, a letter carrier in the Midwest, who has a lot of big apartment buildings on her route. (Beth isn’t her real name. She fears that if she complains, she’ll be disciplined and could even lose her job.)

Beth says the instructions she and her co-workers are getting — wash your hands and if you’re sick, don’t come to work — aren’t good enough.

“In the Postal Service, basically if you call in like more than three days in a row, you get a letter of warning,” Beth says. She fears that unofficial policy could encourage sick workers to come in and spread the virus.

It seemed like the perfect day for viewing the stunning flower-filled trees.

With warm temperatures and the sun out, crowds of people strolled under the cherry blossoms and spread out picnic blankets in Tokyo’s Yoyogi Park last weekend, all but ignoring the posted signs warning of the dangers of COVID-19 spreading.

Near one of the tall white signs, two pairs of young women stood together and took selfies under the canopy of flowers, oblivious to the warnings.

Tokyo Cherry Blossom Festival Draws Crowds Despite Coronavirus Warnings

Image Credit: Claire Harbage/NPR

It was time to give up our adventure and head home to Texas. Every village in the Peruvian highlands was buzzing with talk of the spreading coronavirus. South American countries were starting to close their borders.

So my partner, Pu Ying Huang, and I headed out of the Peruvian countryside and into the small city of Cajamarca, where we hoped to quickly find a flight home. But when we got there at night on March 16, it was too late.

When we do get out, what scares us most is the life we may encounter when we get to the U.S.

Stay inside, don’t meet with friends, don’t go to work — these are the messages coming from public health officials at every level of government. But increasingly, experts say they believe those stark warnings must be augmented with another message:

If you think you might be sick, even a little sick, get tested for coronavirus.

“Everyone staying home is just a very blunt measure. That’s what you say when you’ve got really nothing else,” says Emily Gurley, an associate scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Being able to test folks is really the linchpin in getting beyond what we’re doing now.”

After a tense day on the Senate floor that included leaders trading barbs over who is to blame for failing to advance a new coronavirus response bill, the top Senate Democrat said late Monday night that he was “very, very close” to an agreement with the White House on a deal for a third wave of emergency funding that could go well past $1 trillion.

“There are still a few little differences. Neither of us think they are in any way going to get in the way of a final agreement. Secretary Mnuchin called the president, we told him we are very, very close to an agreement and he seemed very happy with that,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters shortly before midnight.

Schumer met with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin four times Monday, including a meeting shortly after 8 p.m., a Schumer spokesman had said.

On Monday evening, President Trump stressed what he called the need to reopen America for business even as he said the government also would continue tackling the spiraling coronavirus pandemic.

The White House’s team will make an assessment after next week as to how effective social distancing and other mitigation measures have been in stifling the spread of the virus, said Vice President Pence.

It’s possible at that time that Washington could lift some of the restrictions that have paralyzed the economy, Trump and Pence suggested, but they offered no guarantees and the details weren’t clear.

“I want America to understand this week it’s going to get bad,” U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said Monday morning, speaking about the COVID-19 pandemic and efforts to stop the coronavirus from infecting more people in the U.S.

Adams also urged people to stay home to prevent the respiratory virus from spreading — and he said too many people in New York and other states are ignoring guidance to observe social distancing and avoid close contacts with others.

“I think there are a lot of people who are doing the right things, but I think that unfortunately we are finding out a lot of people think this can’t happen to them,” Adams said in an interview with the TODAY show on NBC News.

This spring was supposed to be an exciting time for Xander Christou. He’s a senior in high school in Austin, Texas, and was looking forward to all the fun: prom, senior skip day and of course, graduation.

But all that’s now out the window. “There’s a sense that it’s incomplete,” says Christou. The school district has closed until April 3rd and Christou says he has this feeling that a unique chapter in his life — senior year — is slipping away. “They’re just parts that we may never get to experience.” One big disruption: any attempt at making plans for next year. “We’re in the midst of college decisions,” he says, and the coronavirus has “really thrown a wrench into a number of things.”

Christou spent most of last fall like many high school seniors: researching and applying to schools. He planned to spend the spring visiting some of the campuses he was accepted to. “Online, the colleges are just names and logos and programs,” he says, “nothing will compare to actually being on campus and speaking face-to-face with current students.”

Graduation, Financial Aid, Admissions — For This Year’s College-Bound, The Future Is In Turmoil