NEW YORK -- New York authorities rushed to send in an army of medical volunteers Wednesday as the statewide death toll from the coronavirus doubled in 72 hours to more than 1,900.
As hot spots flared around the U.S. in places such as New Orleans and Southern California, the nation's biggest city was the hardest hit of them all, with bodies loaded onto refrigerated morgue trucks by gurney and forklift outside overwhelmed hospitals, in full view of passing motorists.
"How does it end? And people want answers," New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. "I want answers. The answer is nobody knows for sure."
President Donald Trump acknowledged that the federal stockpile is nearly depleted of personal protective equipment used by doctors and nurses.
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"Difficult days are ahead for our nation," Trump said. "We're going to have a couple of weeks, starting pretty much now, but especially a few days from now that are going to be horrific."
Scientists offered more evidence Wednesday that the coronavirus is spread by seemingly healthy people who show no clear symptoms, leading the U.S. government to issue new guidance warning that anyone exposed to the disease can be considered a carrier.
Stocks tumbled on Wall Street and markets around the world as the U.S. projected 100,000 to 240,000 deaths in the country before the crisis is over. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than 970 points, or more than 4%.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida joined his counterparts in more than 30 states in issuing a statewide stay-home order, taking action after conferring with Trump. The governors of Pennsylvania and Nevada, both Democrats, and Mississippi's GOP governor took similar steps.
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Also, Georgia's Republican Gov. Brian Kemp announced Wednesday that he will issue a statewide shelter-in-place order and shut down public schools for the rest of the year.
The order will be published today and will be in effect Friday through April 13, Kemp said at a news conference. He defended his decision not to issue it earlier, saying Georgia had implemented tighter restrictions than other states and was following guidance from health professionals.
Trump said his administration has agreed to ship out 1,000 ventilators -- breathing machines that are vital for treating people with severe cases of covid-19. He said the U.S. government has a stockpile of nearly 10,000 but has kept close hold on them so they can be deployed quickly to states that need them.
NATIONS PITCH IN
Meanwhile, European nations facing demand for intensive-care beds are putting up makeshift hospitals, unsure whether they will find enough healthy medical personnel to run them. London is days away from unveiling a 4,000-bed temporary hospital built in a convention center.
In a remarkable turnabout, rich economies where virus cases have exploded are welcoming help from less wealthy ones. Russia sent medical equipment and masks to the United States. Cuba supplied doctors to France. Turkey dispatched protective gear and disinfectant to Italy and Spain.
"The Russian side offered assistance amid the dire epidemiological situation in America," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the state-run Channel One on Tuesday. "Trump gratefully accepted this humanitarian aid."
After Peskov's comments, a video provided by the Russian Defense Ministry showed a transport plane filled with boxes that it said contained masks and other medical equipment taking off from a Moscow regional airfield in darkness.
After Russian President Vladimir Putin made the offer during a Monday conversation with Trump, the U.S. president praised the assistance as "very nice."
The shipment was flown out during a growing coronavirus outbreak in Russia, where some critics believe the official statistics understate the real situation. Russia on Wednesday reported a 19% increase in cases overnight, bringing the total number of infected to 2,777.
The Kremlin hopes that the U.S., as it increases its production capacity, will reciprocate with medical assistance if Russia needs help, Peskov said.
The aid shipment was announced less than a week after Jack Ma, China's richest man, donated more than 1 million masks and 200,000 coronavirus test systems to the Russian military.
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U.S.' STRUGGLES
Worldwide, more than 932,000 people have been infected and more than 46,000 have died, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University, though the real figures are believed to be much higher because of testing shortages, differences in counting the dead, and large numbers of mild cases that have gone unreported.
The U.S. has recorded about 213,000 infections and more than 4,600 deaths, with New York City accounting for about 1 out of 4 dead.
More than 80,000 people have volunteered as medical reinforcements in New York, including recent retirees, health care professionals taking a break from their regular jobs, and people between gigs.
Few have made it into the field yet, as authorities vet and figure out how to use them, but hospitals are expected to begin bringing them in later this week.
"After 9/11, I remember we actually wanted to hear the sound of ambulances on our quiet streets because that meant there were survivors, but we didn't hear those sounds, and it was heartbreaking. Today, I hear an ambulance on my strangely quiet street and my heart breaks, too," said 61-year-old Meg Gifford, who lives on Manhattan's Upper East Side.
Cuomo moved to close the city's playgrounds because of too much crowding, but people can still use wide-open green spaces as long as they stay 6 feet apart. Police went around in patrol cars, blaring warnings to obey the rules.
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, a train engineer intentionally drove a speeding locomotive off a track at the Port of Los Angeles because he was suspicious about the presence of a Navy hospital ship docked there during the coronavirus crisis, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
The locomotive crashed through a series of barriers and fences before coming to rest more than 250 yards from the USNS Mercy on Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a release.
Nobody was hurt.
Eduardo Moreno, 44, was charged with one count of train wrecking, prosecutors said. He acknowledged in two interviews with law enforcement authorities that he intentionally derailed and crashed the train near the Mercy, according to the criminal complaint.
"You only get this chance once. The whole world is watching. I had to," Moreno told investigators, according to the complaint. "People don't know what's going on here. Now they will."
Elsewhere around the country, the number of dead in Louisiana was put at 115 by Johns Hopkins University. In Southern California, officials reported that at least 51 residents and six staff members at a nursing home east of Los Angeles have been infected and that two have died.
Florida's DeSantis was locked in a standoff over whether two cruise ships with sick or dead passengers may dock in his state. More than 300 U.S. citizens were on board. Two deaths were blamed on the virus, and nine people tested positive, the Holland America cruise line said.
STAYING AT HOME
Meanwhile, Trump is resisting calls to issue a national stay-at-home order to stem the spread of the coronavirus despite his administration's projections that tens of thousands of Americans are likely to be killed by the disease.
Trump said earlier this week that he and members of his administration had discussed issuing a stay-at-home order but that it was "pretty unlikely" for now.
Surgeon General Jerome Adams said Wednesday that the nation's federalist system leaves much of the authority on how to properly respond to catastrophes to individual state governors and local officials.
"We trust the governors and the mayors to understand their people and understand whether or not they feel like they can trust the people in their states to make the right decisions," Adams said on ABC's Good Morning America.
The lack of a unified, 50-state response also collides with evidence emerging that coronavirus infections are being spread by people who have no clear symptoms, complicating efforts to gain control of the pandemic.
A study conducted by researchers in Singapore and published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday is the latest to estimate that about 10% of new coronavirus infections may be spread by people who were infected with the virus but were not experiencing symptoms.
The Trump administration has issued guidelines urging Americans to work from home if possible, cancel on-site instruction at schools, and avoid large gatherings.
Vice President Mike Pence said White House models for the coronavirus toll show the country on a trajectory akin to hard-hit Italy.
Speaking to CNN, Pence said, "We think Italy may be the most comparable area to the United States at this point." Italy, which has already recorded more than 13,100 deaths, has issued a nationwide quarantine, shutting down almost all industrial production and offices and largely prohibiting residents from leaving their homes.
The White House's best-case projection for loss of life assumes statewide stay-at-home orders, according to a senior administration official familiar with Trump's thinking. Trump, the official said, is a believer in federalism and that it is up to individual governors to set restrictions for their states. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions.
On Wednesday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency requested 100,000 body bags, known as Human Remains Pouches, through an interagency group that directed it to the Defense Department. The Pentagon is looking into buying more bags and will draw some initially from a stockpile of 50,000 it maintains, according to two people familiar with the request.
The Defense Logistics Agency's Troop Support unit manages the Pentagon's stockpile of the green nylon, 94-inch-by-38-inch body bags that are typically distributed to war zones. The unit has been in contact with the current contractor to assess its manufacturing capabilities but hasn't yet placed a formal order, according to one of the people.
TOLL IN EUROPE
Even as the virus appears to have slowed its growth in overwhelmed Italy and in China, where it first emerged, hospitals in Europe are buckling under the load.
"It feels like we are in a Third World country. We don't have enough masks, enough protective equipment, and by the end of the week we might be in need of more medication, too," said Paris emergency worker Christophe Prudhomme.
Spain reported a record 864 deaths in one day, for a total of more than 9,300, while France registered an unprecedented 509 in a day and more than 4,000 in all. In Italy, which has seen more deaths than any other country, morgues overflowed with bodies, caskets piled up in churches and doctors were forced to decide which desperately ill patients would get breathing machines.
England's Wimbledon tennis tournament was canceled for the first time since World War II.
The strain facing some of the world's best health care systems has been aggravated by hospital budget cuts over the past decade in Italy, Spain, France and Britain. They have called in medical students, retired doctors and even laid-off flight attendants with first aid training.
The staffing shortage has been worsened by the high numbers of infected personnel. In Italy alone, nearly 10,000 medical workers have contracted the virus and more than 60 doctors have died.
For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. But for others, especially older adults and people with health problems, it can cause severe problems such as pneumonia.
Information for this article was contributed by Robert Bumsted, Angela Charlton, Mark Sherman, Aamer Madhani, Zeke Miller, Alan Fram, Jeff Amy, Sudhin Thanawala, Joseph Wilson, Danica Kirka, Jill Lawless, Frank Jordans, Karen Matthews, Nick Perry, Meghan Hoyer, Colleen Long, Dino Hazell, Paul J. Weber, Grant Schulte, Brendan Farrington, David Pitt and Stephen Groves of The Associated Press; and by Jake Rudnitsky, Tony Capaccio and Ari Natter of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 04/02/2020