THE NEW YORK TIMES, SATURDAY, APRIL 4, 2020 N ATracking an OutbreakNew York
what we are all grappling with as
we navigate our way through this
pandemic,” Vicki L. LoPachin, the
chief medical officer of the Mount
Sinai Health System, wrote in an
email to the staff on Friday. “We
are healing so many and comfort-
ing those we can’t save — one pre-
cious life at a time.”
Around the country, the total
number of coronavirus cases
spiked sharply as of Friday after-
noon, exceeding 275,000, with
more than 7,000 total deaths. After
New York, New Jersey was the
state with the highest rate of infec-
tion. Globally, more than one mil-
lion people had been infected and
nearly 60,000 had died.
Hot spots continued to emerge.
“We continue to watch, in addi-
tion, the Chicago area, the Detroit
area, and have developing con-
cerns around Colorado, the Dis-
trict of Columbia,” Dr. Deborah
Birx, the White House coro-
navirus response coordinator,
said at a daily news briefing on
Friday. She added that the govern-
ment would “move supplies cre-
atively around the country to
meet the needs of both the front
line health care providers but also
every American who needs our
support right now.”
As the inexorable march of con-
tagion in New York continued,
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo issued an
impassioned plea to the nation to
hurry medical staff and equip-
ment to the state before an ex-
pected shortfall of both over-
whelmed its already groaning
health care system, perhaps as
early as next week.
Mr. Cuomo, vowing to return
the favor, said he would redirect
hundreds of lifesaving ventilators
and teams of local doctors to other
states as soon as the crisis in New
York passed its peak.
But unable to count on re-
inforcements arriving fast
enough, Mr. Cuomo also issued an
extraordinary executive order on
Friday giving him the power to
commandeer ventilators from
hospitals in less-affected counties
in the state and to redeploy them
to hard hit areas in Brooklyn,
Queens and Long Island.
“I’m not going to let people die
because we didn’t redistribute
ventilators,” Mr. Cuomo said, add-
ing, “We don’t have enough — pe-
riod.”
But Representative Elise Ste-
fanik, a Republican congress-
woman who represents a rural
district of northern New York,
said in a statement that she was
“very concerned” about the order.
“I represent demographically
the largest number of seniors of
any district in New York,” she
wrote. “This is the most vulnera-
ble age group facing Covid-19 and
needs to be considered.”
She and 11 other state and fed-
eral Republican officials later is-
sued a joint statement opposing
Mr. Cuomo’s action.
As the outbreak entered its sec-
ond month, New York City in par-
ticular hunkered down for what
promised to be a long and grueling
siege.
Earlier in the week, city officials
rushed 45 refrigerated trailers to
overburdened hospitals where in-
house morgues were filling up
with bodies. Crematories, under
eased restrictions, are now al-
lowed to run around the clock. A
special team of 42 military mortu-
ary affairs officers was starting to
arrive from Virginia to help the
city’s medical examiner.
One out of every six police offi-
cers in the city had called out sick
or was in quarantine, straining the
department at the very moment
when its 36,000 officers have beenasked to enforce new rules in-
tended to slow the spread of infec-
tion.
To cut back on crowding in
emergency rooms, the city’s Fire
Department issued new guide-
lines to thousands of paramedics,
telling them not to bring cardiac
patients to hospitals unless they
were able to find a pulse.
Mayor Bill de Blasio has been
warning that the city was only
days away from what he called a
“D-Day,” when the outbreak
would overwhelm the health care
system, putting hundreds, if not
thousands, of additional people at
risk. In an early morning televi-
sion appearance on Friday, he
made his own appeal to the coun-
try, asking for what amounted to adraft for medical personnel.
“Unless there is a national ef-
fort to enlist doctors, nurses, hos-
pital workers of all kinds and get
them where they are needed most
in the country in time, I don’t see,
honestly, how we’re going to have
the professionals we need to get
through this crisis,” Mr. de Blasio
said.
As the weekend neared, the
possibility emerged that the city
could finally get relief from the
U.S.N.S. Comfort, the Navy hospi-
tal ship that arrived in New York
to great fanfare on Monday.
Pentagon officials had initially
said the ship would treat only non-
coronavirus patients in an effort
to keep the vessel free from infec-
tion. But on Friday, Gen. Mark A.Milley, the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, said the military
was “reassessing” its policy and
might allow coronavirus patients
aboard the ship.
General Milley’s comments
came after New York hospital ex-
ecutives complained on Thursday
that the Comfort was sitting at its
berth in New York largely empty
while hospitals in the city were
overrun.
In one sign of the strain on hos-
pitals, Lenox Hill Medical Center
in Manhattan temporarily experi-
enced a drop in pressure in its oxy-
gen supply on Friday, according to
a memo hospital executives sent
to staff members. The cause was
apparently the heavy demand.
To bolster the local health care
system, Mr. Cuomo this week en-
acted an unprecedented plan for
all of New York’s hospitals — pub-
lic and private, upstate and down-
state — to work together in a kind
of single network. By the end of
the week, there were early signs
that the effort was working.
On Thursday, Woodhull Medical
Center, a public hospital in Brook-
lyn, reached its capacity for treat-
ing virus patients and transferred
15 to the Bellevue Medical Center,
a public hospital in Manhattan,
said Dr. Robert Chin, Woodhull’s
emergency department director.
“So far, we’ve been holding it to-
gether,” Dr. Chin said. “Are we
ready for what’s coming? I can’t
really say — because I don’t know
what’s coming.”NEARING A BREAKING POINT
With Deaths Mounting, New York Pleads for Outside Help
From Page AKeeping customers six feet
apart on Friday at Garden
State Check Cashing in East
Orange, N.J. Left, a pre-
screening site for coronavirus
testing at Mount Sinai Hospi-
tal West in Manhattan.BRYAN ANSELM FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESCHANG W. LEE/THE NEW YORK TIMESReporting was contributed by Jes-
se McKinley, William K. Rash-
baum, Matt Richtel, Brian Rosen-
thal, Michael Rothfeld and Ali
Watkins.
SHUTDOWNSSupreme Court Postpones
Arguments This Month
The Supreme Court announced on
Friday that it would postpone the
last two weeks of arguments of
the term “in keeping with public
health guidance.” The arguments,
which had been scheduled to start
on April 20, may be rescheduled
before the term ends, typically in
late June, if circumstances per-
mit, the court said.
The most urgent of the cases
that would have been argued in
April was one on whether mem-
bers of the Electoral College must
vote as they had promised to do.
Lawyers on both sides had urged
the court to decide the question
before the presidential election.
The court had already post-
poned the two weeks of argu-
ments that had been scheduled to
start on March 23. They included
cases on whether President
Trump’s accounting firm and
bankers must disclose his finan-
cial records.
“All of the justices are healthy,”
Kathleen Arberg, a Supreme
Court spokeswoman, said in a
statement on Friday. She added
that the justices conducted their
usual private conference on Fri-
day by telephone.
In keeping with its recent prac-
tice, the court will issue decisions
on its website on Monday, but the
justices will not take the bench to
announce them. “The court will
continue to proceed with the
resolution of all cases argued this
term,” Friday’s announcement
said.
“The court will consider a
range of scheduling options and
other alternatives if arguments
cannot be held in the courtroom
before the end of the term,” the
announcement said. “The court
building remains open for official
business, but most court person-
nel are teleworking. The court
remains closed to the public until
further notice.”MISINFORMATIONE.P.A. Warns Retailers
Over Sham Products
The Environmental Protection
Agency warned Friday that disin-
fectants and sanitizers falsely
claiming to protect against the
coronavirus are flooding the
market and threatened legal
action against retailers that sell
unregistered products.
A necklace containing chlorine
dioxide, a bleaching agent, that
supposedly sanitizes the wearer is
among the bogus products, as is a
sticker that claims to provide 30
days of protection against the
coronavirus. A range of unregis-
tered disinfectants, sprays, air
purifiers and wipes also falsely
assert they prevent infection.
A senior administration official
said the agency is seeing a “huge”
spike in such products, which
have not been tested or registered
by the E.P.A. While such products
might not be harmful, the official
said, they offer the public a dan-
gerously false sense of protection
that could deter social distancing
and promote the spread of
Covid-19, the disease caused by
the coronavirus.
Officials said the agency in-
tends to issue enforcement meas-
ures that require companies to
halt sales of fake products. It also
is coordinating with the Depart-
ment of Justice “to bring the full
force of law” against anyone who
continues to do so.HOARDING OF MATERIALSSeized Medical Supplies
To Be Given to Hospitals
Nearly a million medical-grade
masks and gloves seized this
week from a Brooklyn man will go
to medical workers in dire need of
supplies in New York and New
Jersey, the Justice Department
and Department of Health and
Human Services said Thursday.
The seized stockpile included
192,000 N95 respirator masks,
130,000 surgical masks and nearly
600,000 medical grade gloves, the
agencies said.
The man, Baruch Feldheim, 43,
was charged with lying to federal
agents about price-gouging. He
charged a doctor a 700 percent
markup last month on an order of
masks, gowns and hazmat gear,
the F.B.I. said.
When federal agents first con-
fronted Mr. Feldheim on Sunday,
he coughed at them and said he
had tested positive for the coro-
navirus, the authorities said. He
was charged with one count of
assault on a federal officer.Around
The Region
A few days after losing his job in
March, Paul Gentile was throwing
away trash outside his Brooklyn
apartment building when he no-
ticed a new sign hanging near the
front door.
Because of the coronavirus pan-
demic, which has brought life to a
near standstill in New York City
and caused an untold number of
people to lose their jobs, tenants in
the building did not need to pay
April rent, it read.
“STAY SAFE, HELP YOUR
NEIGHBORS & WASH YOUR
HANDS!!!” the landlord, Mario
Salerno, wrote on the signs, which
he posted at all of his 18 residential
buildings in the borough.
More than any large city in the
United States, New York is made
up of millions of renters, many of
whom survive paycheck to pay-
check and pay a large portion of
their monthly income for a place
to live.
The sudden collapse of the
economy has left many New York-
ers stressing about how they can
pay their bills, especially rent.
Across New York City, land-
lords have started to panic as well,
as it has become clear some ten-
ants are unable to afford rent. Sev-
eral surveys conducted last
month estimated that 40 percent
of renters in New York City, if not
more, would not make April rent,
which was due on Wednesday.
The trickle-down effect could be
swift and devastating, according
to landlords, leaving them scram-
bling to find ways to pay their own
bills, such as water, sewer and
taxes at their buildings.
It is too soon to get an accurate
gauge of how many renters with-
held their April rent and what the
fallout would be for landlords.
But Mr. Salerno said in an inter-
view on Thursday that he did not
care about losing his rental in-
come in April, nor did he care to
calculate the amount that he
would not be collecting from his 80
apartments. He said he had about
200 to 300 tenants in total.
He is likely forgoing hundreds
of thousands of dollars in income
by canceling April rent.
His only interest, he said, was in
alleviating stress for his renters,
even those who were still em-
ployed and now working from
home.
“My concern is everyone’s
health,” said Mr. Salerno, 59,
whose rent gesture was first re-
ported by the local news site
Greenpointers.com. “I told them
just to look out for your neighbor
and make sure that everyone has
food on their table.”
Mr. Salerno said a handful of his
tenants messaged him last month
saying that they could not afford
rent. Three renters from Ireland
packed up a few belongings and
moved back home, he said.
When Mr. Gentile spotted the
sign last week, he said he was sur-
prised but not shocked. For the
nearly four years Mr. Gentile has
lived in the apartment, Mr. Saler-
no has been a model landlord.
Emergencies are fixed almost
immediately, he said, such as awater leak in Mr. Gentile’s ceiling
that was fixed, patched and
painted within several hours.
“You don’t see that, especially
in a landlord-tenant relationship
in New York City,” Mr. Gentile, 28,
said. “He’s amazing.”
As New York City started to
shut down in mid-March, Mr. Gen-
tile quickly lost his job. He was a
lawyer for a personal injury firm
who spent most of his time in
courthouses, all of which were
closed on March 18. There was lit-
tle work for him outside the court-
room.
The law firm’s partners told him
that they hope to rehire him when
the economy rebounds, he said.
But without a job and rent almost
due, Mr. Gentile spent the end ofMarch stressing about using his
savings for bills, including what
he and his fiancée had reserved
for their wedding in November.
“It has alleviated a huge
amount of stress that I have been
having with the unemployment
system in the state,” he said, add-
ing that he had called the New
York State Department of Labor
roughly 240 times over two days
in March to finally connect with a
person to file for benefits.
For decades, Mr. Salerno has
been a larger-than-life character
in his part of Williamsburg, on the
other side of the Brooklyn-Queens
Expressway from the ritzy high-
rises near the East River. During
the day, he runs the Salerno Auto
Body Shop and gasoline station,which his father opened in 1959.
In the 1980s, Mr. Salerno
started to buy vacant lots across
Brooklyn to store cars damaged in
accidents before they were re-
paired. In the late 1990s, he
started to turn 18 of the lots into
apartment buildings.
The repair shop and station are
both open, though gasoline sales
are down about half from a month
ago, he said. He would prefer not
to be working on people’s cars
during the pandemic, but wanted
to be there for his customers.
“Do I really want to do a simple
oil change and a brake job?” Mr.
Salerno said on the phone at the
auto shop on Thursday. “No, but I
have a lot of doctors and nurses
who need their cars serviced.”HOUSING
Mario Salerno wants to alleviate financial stress for his renters. “He’s amazing,” one tenant said.VICTOR J. BLUE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESLandlord Is Waiving Rent
For Hundreds in Brooklyn
By MATTHEW HAAG