wednesday, march 11 , 2020. the washington post eZ sU A
the coronavirus outbreak
P eople walk into a martial arts school in New rochelle. residents are free to move about within a one-
mile radius, but schools and other gathering places are closed.
has his law office.
Arminio’s son’s elementary
school closed Tuesday for the next
two weeks.
“That’s going to be a challenge,”
he said. He worries about child
care — he has to work, as does his
wife, a schoolteacher in a neigh-
boring district that remains open.
“I’m not going to be quarantined
from my bills.”
His next-door neighbor at-
tends the Young Israel temple and
has self-quarantined.
Arminio’s mother-in-law, who
has respiratory problems, lives
with his family. She has been
staying inside. restaurants have
closed, and customers have van-
ished from the Acme supermar-
ket where his wife shops. He was
surprised to see that the National
Guard had been called in.
“There’s been zero guidance
from the top down,” Arminio said.
rabbi David A. Schuck, who
leads the conservative Beth El
Synagogue Center less than a mile
from the synagogue that closed,
said he is still trying to under-
stand how Tuesday’s news will
affect his congregation. The syna-
gogue’s nursery school and reli-
gious school have been closed for
a week. Tuesday’s announcement
means the synagogue plans to
limit large gatherings and prayer
services, and a bat mitzvah sched-
uled for this weekend has been
canceled.
Along with several other mem-
bers of his congregation, Schuck
was quarantined for a short time,
though he tested negative for the
coronavirus. People have been
stepping up to help by shopping
for those who have been house-
bound, he said.
“I was surprised at how deeply
touched I was to get a text that
said, ‘I left a cup of Starbucks
coffee on your doorstep,’ ” he said.
[email protected]
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[email protected]
[email protected]bailey reported from new york, and
Meckler and Zezima reported from
Washington. aaron C. Davis, alex
horton and amy goldstein in
Washington contributed to this
report.were continuing to monitor three
of his family members, driving to
his home twice daily to take their
temperatures.
Schlapp, along with reps.
Douglas A. C ollins (r-Ga.), Paul A.
Gosar (r-Ariz.) and matt Gaetz
(r-fla.); Sen. Te d Cruz (r-Te x.);
and the incoming White House
chief of staff, r ep. mark meadows
(r-N.C.), stayed away from their
offices, with most saying they
would wait to return to work until
Saturday — 1 4 days after encoun-
tering the New Jersey man.
Vincent Arminio, 38, a con-
struction superintendent, lives
within the containment radius.
He coincidentally also works in
the manhattan building where
the New rochelle “patient zero”prompted some republican con-
gressmen to self-quarantine and
raised questions about President
Trump’s proximity to the virus.
A 55-year-old New Jersey man
who attended services at Young
Israel late last month became
symptomatic four days later
while attending the Conservative
Political Action Conference in
suburban Washington, according
to New Jersey health officials. The
man posed for pictures in a VIP
area, shook hands with several
members of Congress, and was
greeted by CPAC leader matt
Schlapp, who later shook Trump’s
hand.
The man remained hospital-
ized Tuesday in New Jersey, and
local health officials said theyThe order to close schools came
against the wishes of New ro-
chelle Superintendent Laura fei-
jóo, who had argued that closure
would be particularly difficult for
families without alternative child
care and those who depend on
schools for meals. She also said
that students would be likely to
congregate outside school any-
way, meaning the virus could still
spread among them — though
children have largely been spared
from the virus’s most serious ef-
fects.
“We believe students are safest
in school and are eager to reopen
as soon as possible,” feijóo told
reporters Tuesday.
Cuomo said the initial plan was
to shut down the whole district,
but officials decided just to close
schools within the one-mile radi-
us.
“We could have closed the en-
tire district,” he said. “The super-
intendent’s opinion doesn’t gov-
ern here. But it doesn’t make any
sense, either.”
feijóo said there have been no
confirmed cases of covid-19 in the
district’s schools, but she believes
it is inevitable that a student or
staff member will contract the
virus.
Students have been given
homework “much like a summer
assignment” but will not receive
remote or video instruction.
Hand sanitizer will be distributed
in schools that remain open. At-
tendance in the district has plum-
meted this week: Ty pically,
97 percent of students attend
school on a daily basis, she said,
and on Tuesday, just 77 percent
showed up.
New rochelle mayor Noam
Bramson said the one-mile radius
will not be militarized or have
checkpoints. Nursing and retire-
ment homes in the city were re-
fusing visitors, and, he said, se-
niors in town will have cold meals
delivered to them. The senior cen-
ter has been shuttered.
“The heaviest burdens” of the
virus fell on the congregants of
Young Israel, the mayor said.
“There has been a great commit-
ment to the common good,”
Bramson said, from members
who self-quarantined.
The cluster in New rochelle is
linked to the exposure in the
Washington area that hasNew rochelle synagogue, which
has been ground zero for infec-
tions in the area.
The order affected a half-dozen
public schools — three in New
rochelle and three in the neigh-
boring Tuckahoe Union free Dis-
trict. Six private schools are also
affected: three inside the contain-
ment zone and three Jewish
schools outside it.
Cuomo said in an interview
that state officials “talked to every
national health expert that we
could get a hold of” and that the
decision was made to stop gather-
ings in the area because of the
density of positive cases there.
“No one’s had an objection. It’s
inarguable. You have a cluster of
cases,” he said. “It’s a public
health crisis. So a public healthcrisis doesn’t follow governmen-
tal or school district boundaries.”
Cuomo said the National
Guard will deliver meals to low-
income children whose schools
are closed, so that they do not
miss out on the free or subsidized
breakfasts and lunches they
would normally receive from the
district.
The state is working on a full
list of closings with local and
county officials. Supermarkets
and other stores will remain
open, and people are free to drive
and walk within the one-mile ra-
dius. Cuomo said his action does
not amount to a quarantine.
A satellite facility to test for the
coronavirus is slated to arrive in
New rochelle within the next few
days, Cuomo said, noting that the
city’s cases represent the largest
cluster of new infections in the
country.online to avoid bringing large
groups of students together. Busi-
nesses are asking employees to
work from home, and sports tour-
naments and major conferences
across the country have been can-
celed.
Anthony fauci, director of the
National Institutes of Health’s
National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases, said during a
Tuesday night briefing that the
United States had 712 cases of
covid-19 and 27 deaths as of earli-
er in the day.
“I can guarantee by the time of
this evening, there will be several
more, and tomorrow there will be
several more,” he said.
As of late Tuesday night, the
number of coronavirus-related
deaths had risen to 31, including
two more in Washington state,
one more in California and one in
South Dakota.
“A s a nation, we can’t be doing
the kind of things we were doing a
few months ago,” fauci said. “It
doesn’t m atter whether you are in
a state that has no infections or
one infection.... If you don’t h ave
a case, cases will come.”
In Italy, people appeared to be
heeding the orders of a nation-
wide lockdown as the country saw
its highest single-day increase in
deaths related to the virus, bring-
ing the total there to 631. more
European countries tightened
their borders, with some effec-
tively barring Italians from enter-
ing. Austria, Poland and the
Czech republic have banned
large gatherings, while Dubai has
closed its port to cruise ships.
In Iran, officials struggled to
contain one of the world’s biggest
outbreaks, with more than 8,
confirmed cases, including
among at least two dozen law-
makers.
Chinese President Xi Jinping
went on a victory lap in Wuhan,
the epicenter of the global out-
break, as the number of new in-
fections there plummeted, per-
haps offering hope that the
spread in other parts of the world
could follow a similar trend given
time.
But Jeanne marrazzo, director
of infectious diseases at the Uni-
versity of Alabama at Birming-
ham School of medicine, said it
remains to be seen whether the
number of cases in China contin-
ues to decline. Worldwide, she
said, the outbreak is concerning.
“I think it’s going to get worse,”
she said.
In Washington state, which has
the second-highest number of
coronavirus cases and deaths in
the United States, officials in Seat-
tle and King County announced
74 new cases and two additional
deaths Tuesday.
There have been a total of 190
cases of covid-19, the disease
caused by the virus, in the county
and 22 deaths — 1 9 of them
among residents of a single nurs-
ing home, where elderly and in-
firm residents fell victim to the
virus. Thus far, more than 70 per-
cent of the coronavirus-related
deaths in the United States have
been linked to the Life Care Cen-
ter in Kirkland, Wash.
marrazzo said the containment
zone in New rochelle is a “new
concept” t hat aims to mitigate the
spread of the virus — which al-
ready is circulating in the com-
munity — but does not prohibit
people from moving about. It is a
form of social distancing, she
said, that keeps people away f rom
one another but also has some
permissiveness.
“I think this kind of thing is
kind of as directive as we can get
in our society,” she said.
The one-mile containment ra-
dius in the New York suburb ema-
nates from the Young Israel of
virus from A
‘Containment zone’ in N.Y. suburb is a ‘matter of life and death,’ governor says
photos by John taggart for the Washington post
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