TUESDAy, MARCH 3 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST eZ sU A
THE CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK
MIDDLE: Municipal employees monitor the coronavirus outbreak in Kirkland on Sunday at City Hall.
ABOVE: A sign indicates out-of-stock items Sunday at a grocery store in Kirkland, where residents
were urged to take basic precautions such as washing their hands and staying home if they are sick.
The city has become the center of the most serious outbreak in the United States.seas offered possible signs of what
may lie ahead for the United
States.
Schools across Japan mostly
closed their doors monday in re-
sponse to a controversial request
by Prime minister Shinzo Abe last
week to make a concerted attempt
to slow the s pread o f the virus.
South Korea said it would ex-
tend its school closures by two
weeks to march 23, its education
minister announced.
Japanese officials studying the
outbreak on the Diamond Prin-
cess cruise ship said more than
half of those infected — nealy 400
out of 705 people who tested posi-
tive — showed no symptoms, un-
derscoring just how difficult the
virus is to detect and how many
people may have contracted it
without knowing it. S ome would
never have been tested unless
they had been onboard the ship,
they said. While many people ap-
pear able to shrug off the virus, it
clearly is devastating to the elder-
ly and people with underlying
health problems. At least seven of
the cruise ship p assengers died.
The European Union’s internal
market commissioner said mon-
day the coronavirus has led to
about $1.1 billion in losses per
month for the European tourism
industry since the start of 2020.
And British Airways on monday
said it was canceling hundreds of
flights — including a dozen be-
tween London and New York — i n
response to the coronavirus out-
break.
An adviser to Iran’s supreme
leader died after contracting the
coronavirus, state media reported
monday. Iraq and Egypt con-
firmed more cases, many of them
linked to Iran.
Senegal confirmed its first case,
marking the second case found in
sub-Saharan Africa. Global health
officials have expressed strong
worries that the epidemic and
death toll could grow rapidly if it
reaches areas such as Africa,
which in many places lacks the
resources and the health infra-
structure to combat the virus. Ni-
geria, the continent’s most popu-
lous country and biggest econo-
my, announced last week that doc-
tors had diagnosed the illness in a
businessman from Italy.
[email protected]
[email protected]
siobhan.o’[email protected]
[email protected]Jay greene in seattle; Danielle
Paquette and borso tall in Dakar,
senegal; Christina Passariello in san
fr ancisco; James mcAuley in Paris;
simon Denyer in tokyo; erin
Cunningham in istanbul; and Kim
bellware, Katie mettler, lenny
bernstein lena H. sun and te o Armus
in Washington contributed to this
report.and Prevention after the agency
released a woman who later was
found to have the novel coronavi-
rus. The city unsuccessfully
sought a temporary restraining
order to prevent the release of
dozens of people scheduled to
leave quarantine in the San Anto-
nio area and demanded another
round of tests be performed.
San Antonio mayor ron Niren-
berg noted that the released wom-
an had visited a mall, eaten at the
food court and stayed at the Holi-
day Inn Express near the city’s
airport. The woman arrived in
Te xas last month from Wuhan,
China, and w as part of a 91-person
group evacuated from Asia. She
had not shown symptoms and
tested negative in two tests, offi-
cials said. After she was let go, the
CDC obtained the results of a
third test showing a “weakly posi-
tive” c onfirmation of the virus.
“We simply cannot have a
screw-up like this from our feder-
al partners,” said Nirenberg. for
days, local officials have fumed
over the f ederal government’s l ack
of response to concerns about
transporting quarantined pa-
tients to the area. They have also
called for better protocols to pre-
vent local transmission.
Nationwide, signs of spreading
panic included the stockpiling of
food, sanitizers and cleaning sup-
plies.
At the Trader Joe’s in mountain
View, Calif., the freezer sections
were empty of pizza and most
ready-made meals. There was no
pasta or rice. Across town at the
Costco near Google’s headquar-
ters, customers climbed s helves to
reach groceries, and lines snaked
through the aisles.
Health officials continued to
beg Americans to stop buying
masks and save them for health
workers who truly need them. on
cable news, U.S. Surgeon General
Jerome Adams argued that con-
sumers who buy masks “actually
can increase the spread of corona-
virus” because people who wear
them improperly tend to fidget
with their masks and touch their
faces r epeatedly.
online, Amazon shoppers in
Seattle, San francisco, New York
and Washington also ran into
problems, with the company
warning customers that its same-
day grocery-delivery service “may
be limited” amid reports of con-
sumers stocking up.
The company routinely offers
two-hour windows for delivery of
items, but the rush by shoppers on
monday left f ew d elivery spots for
the next two days. (Amazon chief
executive Jeff Bezos owns The
Washington Post.)Chaos abroad
meanwhile, worsening situa-
tions in various countries over-“We’re going to see a lot of sick
people, and we’re going to have a
tremendous challenge on our
health-care system,” he said, add-
ing that “it’s impossible for me to
predict what the peak of this out-
break w ill be.”Texas officials lambaste CDC
In Texas, San Antonio lambast-
ed the Centers f or Disease Controlofficer for Seattle and King Coun-
ty. “The risk for all of us of becom-
ing infected will be increasing.”
Duchin urged people to take
basic precautions, such as wash-
ing their hands frequently and
staying home if they are sick. He
said eventually there will be so
many cases — most of them mild
— that it will be impossible to
track them individually.King County now has 14 con-
firmed cases, including those who
have died, while neighboring Sno-
homish County has four. Local
officials said they were not recom-
mending closing s chools.
“We expect the number of cases
will continue to increase in the
coming days and weeks, and we’re
taking this situation extremely se-
riously,” said Jeff Duchin, healthother r esidents and s taff members
have reported coronavirus-like
symptoms. King County leaders
declared a state of emergency, a nd
health officials said they are try-
ing to figure out how far the out-
break has expanded into sur-
rounding counties.
Nationwide, t he number of cas-
es topped 100, and U.S. officials
used increasingly dire language,
even as they sought to push back
against waves of panic and misin-
formation o nline.
“We know there will be more
cases,” Vice President Pence said
at a White House news confer-
ence. “Now we’re focused on miti-
gation of the spread as well as
treatment of people that are af-
fected.”
Trump administration officials
stressed monday that the risk
posed to the public by the corona-
virus remains low but cautioned
the outbreak could change course
as the disease spreads through
person-to-person contact.
Arizona, California, florida,
Georgia, Illinois, massachusetts,
Nebraska, N ew Hampshire, New
York, oregon, rhode Island, Te x-
as, Utah, Wisconsin and Washing-
ton state either have cases con-
firmed by health officials or have
been treating patients with coro-
navirus-like symptoms.
Late monday, Georgia health
officials said two people, a couple
living in Atlanta, tested positive
for coronavirus after one of them
returned from a trip to Italy.
meanwhile, U.S. lawmakers ne-
gotiated through the weekend on
an emergency spending bill and
were closing in monday on a
$7.5 billion coronavirus package,
said two people familiar with the
negotiations who spoke on the
condition o f anonymity to discuss
the proceedings.
The figure being negotiated on
Capitol Hill dwarfs the $1.25 bil-
lion request the White House sent
Congress last week. The legisla-
tion is likely to be unveiled on
Tuesday and pass the House later
this week before moving on to the
Senate.
At a meeting w ith leaders of the
world’s largest pharmaceutical
companies, President Trump
hinted he may enact new travel
restrictions on unnamed nations
with large outbreaks and touted
his administration’s steps to fight
the virus.
The president listened and oc-
casionally interjected to press
pharmaceutical executives on
how quickly a vaccine and treat-
ments could be developed. Thera-
peutic human trials could begin
as early as April, but a vaccine
would take roughly 12 to 18
months to develop, said Anthony
fauci, director of the National
Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases.
Asked about the state of the
economy a fter a tumultuous week
for the stock markets, the presi-
dent noted that “the market’s up
today,” insisting that “our coun-
try’s very strong economically.”
But he said that he would like to
see the federal reserve do more to
address the financial challenges
posed b y the coronavirus’s spread.
A motel for the sick
Around the same time on mon-
day, bleary-eyed public health of-
ficials in Washington state held a
news conference, saying they
were working around the clock to
find places to house the ill. They
said King County is in final negoti-
ations to buy a motel to isolate the
ill and hopes to make new housing
available this week.
County hotlines were ringing
off the hook, they said. And the
outbreak was taxing hospitals,
physicians and other health-care
workers o n the front lines.
King County Executive Dow
Constantine said the outbreak
had entered “a new stage.” The
county’s new emergency declara-
tion, he said, will allow him to
authorize overtime for county of-
ficials and quickly s et u p the mod-
ular housing, which could serve
100 to 200 people.
VIRUS from A
Anticipating spread, White House focusing on ‘mitigation’
PHotos by JoVelle tAmAyo for tHe WAsHington Post
A woman on Sunday exits the Kirkland, Wash., Life Care Center nursing home, t o which eight of the state’s 18 coronavirus cases, including four deaths, are linked. At least 50
other residents and staffers at the center have reported coronavirus-like symptoms. Officials in King County, home to Kirkland and Seattle, declared a state of emergency.
For video, visit wapo.st/coronavirus.“We’re going to see a lot
of sick people, and
we’re going to have a
tremendous challenge
on our health-care
system.”
Jeff Duchin, of the seattle and King
County public health departmentSo handy. So reliable. Home delivery. 1-800-753-POST washingtonpost.com/subscribeSF