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 With health authorities and many governors warning that far more
testing is needed before the U.S. economy can be safely reopened,
New York state launched the nation's most ambitious effort yet to
screen the general population for exposure to the virus.
At the same time, researchers began an effort to test residents of
an entire town near San Francisco for antibodies, while a broader
sampling in Los Angeles County suggested 40 times as many people
were infected there as the number of cases previously documented.
At least three more governors, nevertheless, moved to loosen
restrictions on commerce in their states.
South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster, a Republican, signed an
order allowing retail shops and department stores to resume business
on Tuesday, with limits on how many customers are allowed in.
Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, said he would permit
reopening of hair salons, child care centers and real estate
offices, also subject to social-distancing measures, starting next
week.
And Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican whose state reported
over 1,200 new infections and a spike in deaths on Monday, announced
that gyms, hair salons, bowling alleys, tattoo parlors and massage
parlors could reopen on Friday, followed on Monday by movie theaters
and restaurants.
Stay-at-home orders and widespread business closures imposed in most
states to slow the spread of the virus have stifled the U.S. economy
and thrown at least 22 million people out of work, a level of
unemployment not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The economic damage has led to increasing agitation for relaxing
social-distancing restrictions, especially as the rate of
coronavirus hospitalizations and other indicators of the outbreak's
severity have begun to level off in recent days.
In Pennsylvania, where Democratic Governor Tom Wolf has pledged to
veto a bill in the Republican-led General Assembly that would force
him to reopen some businesses, several hundred demonstrators, some
in cars with horns blaring, rallied in the state capital,
Harrisburg.
CYNICISM VS. FEAR
Many protesters were skeptical about the actual scale of the
pandemic, accusing political leaders of over-reaching.
"All the projections were wrong, but we are still telling people to
stay home and businesses to close. This is not quarantine, this is
tyranny," said Mark Cooper, a 61-year-old retired truck driver.
Others portrayed the stay-at-home measures as essential to save
lives. Yetta Timothy, who was part of a counter-protest in
Harrisburg, said the nursing home where she worked had lost an
untold number of patients.
"They are dying everyday," said the 43-year-old nurse, crying and
holding a sign that read: "My life is on the line."
"I just can't believe all of this is happening, that they want to go
back to work," she said.
Protests demanding an end to stay-at-home restrictions also were
held in Pittsburgh and in the Connecticut state capital, Hartford.
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Monday's demonstrations, like those in the capitals of several other states in
recent days, including Michigan, Minnesota, Virginia, Maryland, Washington state
and Colorado, drew large contingents of self-identified supporters of President
Donald Trump.
Expressing sympathy for the protesters, Trump lashed out on Twitter last week at
Democratic governors in three electoral swing states, saying their stay-at-home
orders had gone too far.
One governor Trump targeted, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, said she appealed to
Vice President Mike Pence during a gubernatorial conference call on Monday for
federal officials to speak out in support of social-distancing restrictions
imposed by state leaders.
Whitmer told reporters after the call that Pence, who is leading the Trump
administration's pandemic response, vowed on the call to do as she requested.
WARNINGS OF RESURGENCE
Medical professionals on the front lines of the battle to curb the pandemic,
which erupted in China late last year, have said the United States could face a
second and even deadlier wave of infections if the lockdowns end prematurely.
The United States has by far the world's largest number of confirmed cases of
COVID-19, the highly contagious lung disease caused by the coronavirus, with
more than 778,000 known infections and over 42,300 deaths, nearly half of them
in the state of New York, according to a Reuters tally.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases, told ABC News there would be no real economic recovery until
authorities got the virus under control and jumping the gun could lead to a big
spike in cases.
"It's going to backfire, that's the problem," he said.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said testing has to get up to scale before
reopening, adding that he was aware some people were unhappy they had to wear
masks or engage in social distancing. "It's not a question of happy - it's a
question of life and death." .
Researchers on Monday began conducting antibody blood tests on New York state
residents to obtain a baseline of how many may have actually been exposed to the
novel coronavirus. Cuomo said specimens would be collected from a random sample
of 2,000 people a day in what he called the most aggressive such project to date
in the United States.
Graphic: Tracking the novel coronavirus in the U.S.,
https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS-USA/0100B5K8423/index.html
(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Joey Ax, Barbara
Goldberg and Jessica Resnick-Ault in New York, and Nathan Layne in Wilton,
Connecticut, Doina Chiacu in Washington, Keith Coffman in Denver, and Dan
Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Writing by Paul Simao and Steve Gorman; Editing by Bill
Tarrant and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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