Tag Archives: lockdown

Most Americans huddle indoors as coronavirus deaths keep spiking

By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Four new states imposed sweeping stay-at-home directives on Wednesday in response to the coronavirus pandemic, putting over 80% of Americans under lockdown as the number of deaths in the United States nearly doubled in three days.

The governors of Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Nevada each instituted the strict policies on a day when the death toll from COVID-19 shot up by 925 to more than 4,800 nationwide, with 214,000 confirmed cases, according to a Reuters tally.

President Donald Trump said he saw no need for the federal government to issue a nationwide decree, with 39 states and the District of Columbia now requiring residents to stay home except for essential outings to the doctor or grocery store.

He also told a White House briefing on Wednesday he was considering a plan to halt flights to coronavirus hot spots.

“We’re certainly looking at it, but once you do that you really are clamping down on an industry that is desperately needed,” Trump told a White House news briefing.

Such a plan might conceivably shut down traffic at airports in hard-hit New York, New Orleans and Detroit.

“We’re looking at the whole thing,” Trump said of curtailing domestic flights already greatly reduced as demand has fallen.

White House medical experts have forecast that even if Americans hunker down in their homes to slow the spread of COVID-19, some 100,000 to 240,000 people could die from the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus.

A Pentagon official who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity said the U.S. Department of Defense was working to provide up to 100,000 body bags for use by civilian authorities in the coming weeks.

Since 2010, the flu has killed between 12,000 and 61,000 Americans a year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 1918-1919 flu pandemic killed 675,000 in the United States, according to the CDC.

A healthcare worker walks outside a newly constructed field hospital in the East Meadow of Central Park during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., April 1, 2020. REUTERS/Brendan Mcdermid

New York state remained the epicenter of the outbreak, accounting for more than a third of the U.S. deaths. Governor Andrew Cuomo told police on Wednesday to enforce rules more aggressively for social distancing.

“Young people must get this message, and they still have not gotten the message. You still see too many situations with too much density by young people,” Cuomo, a Democrat, said in imposing rules to close playgrounds, swing sets, basketball courts and similar spaces.

“How reckless and irresponsible and selfish for people not to do it on their own,” Cuomo said.

CALIFORNIA CASES SURGE

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio told a news conference the city was contracting with hotels as part of a massive effort to add 65,000 additional hospital beds by the end of the month.

De Blasio, also a Democrat, said the city had arranged to add 10,000 beds at 20 hotels, which have lost most of their guests as travel has stopped.

“This is going to be an epic process during the month of April to build out all that capacity,” de Blasio said. “But this goal can be reached.”

California saw the number of coronavirus cases surge by roughly 1,300 over the day before to nearly 10,000 as Governor Gavin Newsom warned that even as stay-at-home policies appeared to be having some effect, the state would run out of intensive- care hospital beds equipped with ventilators within six weeks.

Newsom said California could still manage to “bend” the state’s infection curve more, saving the need for additional beds, if residents were rigorous in staying home and avoiding contact with others.

“We are in a completely different place than the state of New York and I hope we will continue to be, but we won’t unless people continue to practice physical distancing and do their part,” the Democratic governor told a news conference in the state capital, Sacramento.

But Americans under lockdown and largely unable to work struggled with making ends meet as rent came due on Wednesday, the first day of the month.

In Oakland, California, Alfa Cristina Morales said she had been surviving on money saved for a U.S. citizenship application since losing her job at a coffee shop. Morales had sought unemployment benefits to support her two-year-old son.

“We’re worried that it won’t be enough,” she said.

Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont said a six-week-old baby had died from COVID-19, in what he called “a reminder that nobody is safe from this virus.”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told Fox News that Broward County would likely allow two cruise ships with coronavirus outbreaks carrying a total of 2,500 people to dock in Fort Lauderdale, despite his misgivings about potentially contagious foreign nationals.

“We were concerned about a deluge into the hospitals, but I think it turns out that there will probably be some who need to go, but it’s very manageable and the local hospital system thinks that they can handle it,” DeSantis, a Republican, told Fox.

At Fort Lauderdale, Floridians aboard the ships would be taken home and flights arranged for foreigners, he said.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey, Doina Chiacu, Tim Ahmann, Daniel Trotta, Maria Caspani, Nathan Layne, Stephanie Kelly, Peter Szekely, Lisa Shumaker, Sharon Bernstein, Jeff Mason, Mohammad Zargham, Steve Gorman and Dan Whitcomb; Writing by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Bill Tarrant, Cynthia Osterman and Peter Cooney)

France passes 4,000 coronavirus deaths

PARIS (Reuters) – French health authorities reported 509 new deaths from the coronavirus on Wednesday, taking the total to 4,032, making the country the fourth to pass the 4,000-fatalities threshold after Italy, Spain and the United States.

After speeding up the previous two days, the rate of increase of deaths has decelerated in France, which is now in its third week of lockdown to try to slow the spread of the virus.

The daily government tally still only accounts for those dying in hospital but authorities say they will very soon be able to compile data on deaths in retirement homes, which is likely to result in a big increase in registered fatalities.

State health agency director Jerome Salomon told a news conference that the number of cases had risen to 56,989, a rise of 9%, versus +17% Tuesday.

Salomon said 6,017 people were in a serious condition needing life support, up 8% compared with Tuesday.

France has increased the number of beds in intensive care units from 5,000 to about 10,000 since the start of the crisis and it is scrambling to reach 14,500.

(Reporting by Benoit Van Overstraeten; Editing by Alison Williams)

Coronavirus tag: How the pandemic can affect young minds

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) – It’s a bit like tag, except that you get tagged when someone coughs on you and that means you have the virus and have to go into isolation. If you come out and get tagged again, you die.

Child psychotherapists say playground games in the time of COVID-19 are becoming infused with words that many of the children playing them had never heard before: pandemic, isolation, lockdown.

So while the disease caused by the new coronavirus appears to produce relatively mild symptoms in many children, doctors and psychologists warn the impact of the outbreak and its anxiety-inducing spread may be far more traumatic.

“I’m worried we could develop a generation of children with health anxiety,” said Nikhil Chopra, a family doctor and father of two girls, aged 2 and 4, living in southern England.

His 4-year-old, normally playful and worry-free, he said, was coming home from school last week saying: “If we don’t wash our hands we could die.”

A psychotherapist who works with children in London said the games and playground talk among young children sharply reflect the new world.

Describing the coronavirus tag game, where “if you’re tagged you have to stand at one end of the playground in isolation, and if you come out and get tagged again, you die”, the therapist said fear and confusion were leading some kids to lash out.

“There’s quite a lot of ethnic diversity in the school I work in, and the Chinese children are being victimized and bullied – they are being told they’re “unclean” and “revolting” because “they eat dogs and snakes”. It’s so sad. The children are not bad, but their fear is so great that the only thing they can do is project it onto others to gain a sense of control.”

NERVOUS AND BRAVE

Across the Atlantic, 4-year-old Asher Henkoff says he’s fine when asked how the pandemic is affecting him: “I have my stuffed animals to keep me company, and I get to watch TV,” the Houston, Texas boy said, adding he feels “nerv-brave” – a mix of nervous and brave.

His mother, Alexandra Wax, says Asher has become uncharacteristically clingy, is asking non-stop questions about the new virus and has begun having accidents during the night – something he hasn’t done in years.

While some young minds will be resilient and enable those children to bounce back after the crisis, the risk for others, psychotherapists say, is that the anxiety they see around them now will impact their mental growth and future lives.

“Adults panicking is going to mean children panicking because they will be feeling very unsafe,” said Lucy Russell, a clinical psychologist in southern England and author of an online child mental health blog called “They are the Future”.

“I’m most worried not because of the distress I’m seeing in children right at this moment, but because of the distress I’m seeing in adults and how that will be transmitted to children.”

Russell and other mental health specialists such as Mary Calabrese, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based child psychologist, say traumas like the global coronavirus pandemic can affect children particularly strongly.

Because their brains are still forming, trauma can cause the amygdala – the emotional part of the brain linked to fear and anxiety – to over-react at a time when its link to the frontal cortex – the thinking and more rational part of the brain – is not fully developed.

“The connections aren’t strong,” Russell said. “So young children tend to react emotionally to things – and the thinking, rational part of the brain can’t calm them down.”

Calming becomes a job for adults – parents, neighbors, teachers and friends – said Russell and Calabrese.

Acknowledging how hard this can be for parents and carers whose own lives are filled with anxiety and uncertainty, the specialists advise creating as much structure and predictability as possible to help children feel secure and safe.

And because children’s minds are geared toward problem-solving, they might also respond well to reassurance that focuses on what can be done to control the spread of the virus – like washing hands and staying inside.

“Validate their fears without making it worse,” Calabrese said. “You might want to say: ‘Let’s find out together what this means’. Pull it away from them personally, and say: ‘This is why we all owe it to each other to socially distance’.”

(Reporting and writing by Kate Kelland in London. Additional reporting by Nick Brown in New York; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Lockdown, what lockdown? UK begins tougher action against those ignoring shutdown

By Michael Holden

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain brought in tough measures on Thursday to curb the spread of coronavirus and ensure people obey the government’s virtual lockdown which many thousands are feared to have so far ignored.

The new powers allow police to issue instant fines those who leave their homes without good reason or gather in groups of more than two people.

In northern England, one police force has begun introducing random vehicle checkpoints to ensure the new rules are enforced while the head of the Church of England told Britons who were flouting the instructions to “get your act together”.

Last week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered pubs, restaurants and nearly all shops to close, banned social gatherings and told people to stay at home unless they needed to buy food, go out to essential work or to exercise once a day.

While millions have respected the measures, roads and parks have remained busy, and the authorities across the country have repeatedly reported that people have not respected the 2 metre (6 foot) guidance on social distancing while others have continued to mingle.

On Thursday, a new regulations came into effect which give the authorities the power to impose a 30-pound fixed penalty on those who breach the rules. Repeat offenders could ultimately receive a fine of up to 960 pounds and might be arrested.

Those who did not pay up could be taken to court, where magistrates could impose unlimited fines, the government said.

“The prime minister has been clear on what we need to do: stay at home to protect our NHS and save lives,” said Home Secretary (interior minister) Priti Patel.

PARKS CLOSED

Some Britons have continued their daily routine and risked spreading the virus which the government fears could overwhelm the National Health Service if large numbers contract COVID-19.

In east London, police and the Tower Hamlets local authority said they had been forced to close Victoria Park, one of the largest and most popular open public spaces in the area, because people were failing to abide by the guidance.

The Royal Parks, a charity which looks after eight major parks across the capital, said it too was considering shutting its gates.

“It is up to all of us collectively to adhere to the latest guidance, otherwise we will have to consider closing the parks. We will keep the situation under constant review,” said Tom Jarvis, its Director of Parks.

Other cities have already closed some parks and facilities to meet the guidance on social distancing while Greater Manchester firefighters said they had received reports of lots of people having barbecues on moorlands.

Meanwhile police in Devon, southwest England, said when they has asked a young cyclist why he was four miles from his home and not following the rules, he had replied: “It only kills old people”.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, spiritual head of the Church of England, said people should not act selfishly.

“Get your act together,” he said to those who have been ignoring the strict government social distancing instructions.

“If you are not complying, you are risking other people’s lives, not just your own,” he told ITV News.

To ensure compliance, police in northern England said they would bring in vehicle checkpoints from Thursday, along with foot patrols to disperse any groups.

“We sincerely hope that we won’t have to resort to enforcement action, but if people do not comply, we will,” said Mike Walker, Assistant Chief Constable of North Yorkshire.

Meanwhile, Britain’s Director of Public Prosecutions Max Hill said anyone who claimed they had the virus and deliberately coughed at police or other emergency workers could be charged with common assault and face up to two years in jail.

“Let me be very clear: this is a crime and needs to stop.”

(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)

Crazy haircut? Shave? Americans in coronavirus lockdown try out makeovers

Crazy haircut? Shave? Americans in coronavirus lockdown try out makeovers
By Barbara Goldberg

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Jacob Kunthara’s wife and three adult children had never seen him without the mustache he sported for 45 years. During Coronavirus lockdown this week at home in Gilbert, Arizona, he shaved and covered up with a face mask, which he whipped off at dinner to shock his entire family.

Fiona Riebeling of New Haven, Connecticut, used a fork, barbeque skewer and nail scissors to transform her sleek long hair into jaunty bangs.

Across the U.S., the COVID-19 “stay at home” order with no end in sight has been seen by many as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to experiment with a dramatically different look, knowing that if the new image is a flop, they have several weeks behind closed doors to grow back or restyle the hair on their faces or heads.

“This is the most radical thing I’ve done ever,” said Kunthara, 62, a civil engineer whose home is about 25 miles (40 km) southeast of Phoenix.

After being forced to work at home for a week, Kunthara wielded his razor last weekend and then donned a face mask for a pre-dinner family prayer session, which ended in his stunning facial strip-tease.

“I thought, ‘Maybe this is the best time to try something. I’m home, we cannot go anywhere,'” Kunthara said.

Riebling said she had to improvise her haircut after watching a YouTube tutorial and realizing she had none of the proper tools.

“I scrounged around my apartment and did it ‘Little Mermaid’ style with thingamabobs,” said Riebeling, 23, a pre-school teacher, referring to the Disney movie in which a mermaid combs her hair using a fork she finds in a sunken ship.

“Being in quarantine takes off a lot of the pressure that you normally might feel going out in public and worrying about your appearance,” said Riebeling, who snipped away during a video conference call with two girlfriends also stuck in their homes, including an investment banker in New York and an occupational therapy student in Chicago.

“We’re limited right now in our movement and what we can do. That’s scary for a lot of people. To find places where you can feel empowered and make decisions about yourself, your body, how you choose to be in the world is a great way of reminding yourself that you are in control of as much as you can be,” Riebeling said.

When an Indianapolis call center deployed staff to work at home last week, employee Ed Maudlin scratched his years-old bushy beard and thought, “I wonder what I look like under there?”

Knowing only his girlfriend and whoever he chose to share his photos with online would see him before his office reopens in “at least a month,” Maudlin this week shaved his beard and his head.

“I decided to go with the full all-over – Nobody will know,” said Maudlin, 45, who said he expects facial and head hair will grow back by the time he’s returned to a shared office.

“I figure I will come out of this looking like maybe I need a bit of a haircut rather than looking like Tom Hanks on the island,” said Maudlin referring to the role Hanks, who this month became one of the first celebrities to test positive for COVID-19, played in the 2000 film “Cast Away.”

(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg in New York; Editing by David Gregorio)

Europe braces for domestic abuse ‘perfect storm’ amid coronavirus lockdown

By Sophie Davies and Emma Batha

BARCELONA/LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Domestic abuse charities in Europe have called for hotels and holiday lets to be turned into refuges as they warned that coronavirus lockdowns would lead to a massive jump in the numbers of women fleeing violence.

Governments, support services and charities are scrambling to help thousands of women facing weeks of isolation at home with a violent partner during quarantine measures.

“It’s a perfect storm,” Suzanne Jacob, chief executive of British charity SafeLives, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Lockdowns will lead to a surge in domestic abuse, but also severely limit the ability of services to help.”

Britain joined Italy, Spain, France and Belgium this week in ordering citizens to stay home to curb the spread of COVID-19, which has killed more than 21,000 worldwide.

As the country shut down, charities urged employers, bank staff, healthworkers and neighbours to be extra vigilant, adding that even a note dropped in a grocery bag could be a lifeline for a woman trapped with an abusive partner.

In Spain, local authorities in the Canary Islands have set up an initiative that enables victims of domestic abuse to go to their pharmacy and request a ‘Mask 19’, a code word that will alert the pharmacist to contact the authorities.

Gender experts say rates of domestic and sexual violence rise when societies are under stress, during natural disasters, food shortages and epidemics – or even when a local football team loses a match.

In China, where the virus first emerged, anecdotal evidence suggests reports of domestic abuse doubled or trebled during its lockdown which began in January. A hashtag translating as #AntiDomesticViolenceDuringEpidemic also went viral.

‘MASSIVE INFLUX’

Countries in Europe said it was too early to say whether cases had gone up.

But domestic abuse survivor Rachel Williams, who is running online support groups in Britain during the crisis, said she had heard of a 30% increase in some countries in lockdown.

“We are going to see a massive influx here, without a shadow of a doubt. The government must look at using hotels, bed and breakfasts and Airbnbs to keep women safe,” she added.

Williams, who was shot by her estranged husband after leaving him following years of abuse, said there were just 4,000 refuge spaces across the country, which saw 19,000 referrals last year.

In Italy – in lockdown since March 9 – refuges and support centres say they are struggling to operate and often lack masks and hand sanitiser for staff.

Coronavirus has killed more than 7,500 people in Italy, by far the worst affected country.

D.i.RE, a network of 80 centres, has asked the government to free up facilities for new domestic abuse cases to prevent them potentially introducing coronavirus into existing refuges.

One centre in the northern Emilia Romagna region is converting a former convent for use. Another in Padua is using holiday lettings site Booking.com to find apartments for women.

Some services in Italy are asking women to provide a negative COVID-19 test in order to access shelters, but tests are not widely available to people without symptoms.

CODED MESSAGES

In France, which went into lockdown last week, Equality Minister Marlene Schiappa has warned that quarantine will be a “breeding ground for violence” with emergency shelter provision a major concern.

France’s national domestic abuse hotline has seen a rise in calls this week, but helplines and charities elsewhere said calls had fallen as it became harder for women to reach out.

“We’re having trouble talking to women by phone as their abusers are on the prowl 24 hours a day,” said abuse survivor Ana Bella Estevez, who runs a support organisation in Seville in southern Spain.

Estevez, who fled her abusive marriage after her husband tried to kill her, said her charity would normally call women when their partners were at work, but was increasingly turning to text-based technology including WhatsApp.

The Spanish government has said it will shortly launch a chat service with geolocation technology enabling victims to contact the police, and another providing psychological support during isolation.

Madrid, Valencia and Andalusia are meanwhile looking to adopt the ‘Mask 19′ initiative, according to media reports.

In Britain, SafeLives said bank staff as well as health workers should watch out for coded messages abuse victims may give out when contacting them.

With many people having lost jobs or income during the crisis, Lloyds Bank – one of Britain’s biggest banks – has sought the charity’s advice on how to spot vulnerable customers.

As people set up new methods of home-working, SafeLives’ CEO Jacob said employers should also think about what their employees’ homelife is like and keep regular contact.

For someone living with a controlling partner a chat with the boss may be one of the few ways they can keep in touch with the outside world.

Jacob also warned that job losses would not only heighten women’s vulnerability to abuse, but could leave them stuck in dangerous relationships long after the crisis is over.

“It’s vital to protect people’s employment and income now to make sure they don’t end up trapped in abusive situations when we get through the other side of this,” she said.

Abuse survivor Williams, who has written about her experiences in a book called “The Devil at Home”, also urged the public to reach out if worried about a neighbour.

“Ask if they need any shopping. That could allow them to write something on their shopping list. Or, if it’s safe to do so, drop a note in the bag when you hand over the shopping,” she said.

“Don’t be a bystander. More so than ever before, domestic abuse is everybody’s business.”

(Additional reporting by Elena Berton in Paris. Writing by Emma Batha @emmabatha; Editing by Claire Cozens. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, which covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Virus fight at risk as world’s medical glove capital struggles with lockdown

By Liz Lee and Krishna N. Das

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Disposable rubber gloves are indispensable in the global fight against the new coronavirus, yet a month’s lockdown in stricken Malaysia where three of every five gloves are made has upended the supply chain and threatens to hamstring hospitals worldwide.

The world’s biggest maker of medical gloves by volume, Top Glove Corp Bhd, has the capacity to make 200 million gloves a day, but a supplier shutdown has left it with only two weeks’ worth of boxes to ship them in, its founder told Reuters.

“We can’t get our gloves to hospitals without cartons,” Executive Chairman Lim Wee Chai said in an interview. “Hospitals need our gloves. We can’t just supply 50% of their requirement.”

The virus, which emerged in China at the end of last year, has left Malaysia with the highest number of infections in Southeast Asia at nearly 1,800 cases, with 17 deaths. To halt transmission, the government has ordered people to stay home from March 18 to April 14.

Glove makers and others eligible for exemption can operate half-staffed provided they meet strict safety conditions. Still, the Malaysian Rubber Glove Manufacturers Association (MARGMA) said it was lobbying “almost every hour” to return the industry to full strength to minimize risk to the global fight.

“We’re shut down,” said Evonna Lim, managing director at packaging supplier Etheos Imprint Technology. “We fall under an exempted category but still need approval.”

Dr Celine Gounder, an infectious diseases specialist at the New York University School of Medicine, said she was using up to six times as many gloves as normal each day due to the number of patients with COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.

“If we get to the point where there is a shortage of gloves, that’s going to be a huge problem because then we cannot draw blood safely, we cannot do many medical procedures safely.”

GLOBAL CALL

With glove supplies dwindling, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on its website this month said some gloves could be used beyond their designated shelf life. On Tuesday, the United States lifted a ban on imports from Malaysian glove maker WRP Asia Pacific who it had previously accused of using forced labor.

Britain’s Department of Health & Social Care has urged Malaysian authorities to prioritize the production and shipment of gloves that are of “utmost criticality for fighting COVID-19,” showed a letter dated March 20 to glove maker Supermax Corp and shared with Reuters.

MARGMA is considering rationing due to the “extremely high demand,” its president Denis Low told Reuters. “You can produce as many gloves as you can but then there’s nothing to pack them into.”

Under normal circumstances, Top Glove can meet less than 40% of its own packaging needs. For the remainder, it said just 23% of suppliers have gained approval to operate at half strength.

“We are lobbying almost every hour, we are putting in a lot of letters to the ministry,” said Low. “We are lobbying hard for the chemical suppliers and we want to ensure that the printers are also being given approval and any other supporting services, even transportation.”

In a statement, MARGMA said that as they were having to rely on half of their staff to work overtime during the lockdown, costs would rise by up to 30% and that buyers had agreed to bear that.

Malaysia’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry on Tuesday said it had received masses of applications to operate through the lockdown, and that it was seeking cooperation from industries to give way to those producing essential goods.

AUTOMATION

Developed economies are home to only a fifth of the world’s population yet account for nearly 70% medical glove demand due to stringent medical standards. At 150, U.S. glove consumption per-capita is 20 times that of China, latest MARGMA data showed.

MARGMA expects demand to jump 16% to 345 billion gloves this year, with Malaysia’s market share rising two percentage points to 65%. Thailand usually follows at about 18% and China at 9%.

Top Glove said orders have doubled since February and it sees sales rising by a fifth in the next six months. Its stock, with a market value of about $3.5 billion, has risen by a third this year versus a fall of 16% in the wider market.

The company, with customers in 195 economies, registered the highest net money inflow last week among listed Malaysian firms, along with peer Hartalega Holdings Bhd, showed MIDF Research data. Other glove makers include Kossan Rubber Industries Bhd and Careplus Group Bhd.

“We are fortunate enough to be in essential goods,” said Lim. “These few months and at least the next six months will be an all-time high in terms of sales volume, revenue and profit.”

With more than 80% of its 44 factories worldwide automated, Top Glove itself is less impacted by the lockdown than its more labor-intensive domestic suppliers. Packaging woes aside, however, ramping up production could turn under-supply into over-supply when the coronavirus outbreak finally subsides.

“This outbreak will create awareness and make humankind healthier,” said Lim. “People will pay more attention, they will invest more, they will buy more so demand will be more.”

(Reporting by Liz Lee and Krishna N. Das; Additional reporting by Ebrahim Harris and Daveena Kaur; Editing by Christopher Cushing)

Coronavirus forces New York City schools into daunting experiment with teaching from afar

By Jonathan Allen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Her students are used to seeing her in the classrooms of Adrien Block Intermediate School 25 in New York City’s Flushing neighborhood, but on Monday morning “Miss Brooke” appeared instead on their laptop and phone screens, sitting in her suburban kitchen.

“These are interesting times,” Brooke Wacha, smiling calmly, told her students, among the 1.1 million children in the largest public school system in the United States, which began a grand, unwieldy experiment in remote learning as the coronavirus outbreak largely confines Americans to their homes.

“I’m hoping to make this process as easy as possible and I don’t want to put any extra stress on the families,” she said in the video she had uploaded to a private YouTube channel. “So, just with this week, hang in there, work on figuring out the technology.”

The city’s school chancellor, Richard Carranza, predicted “hiccups” as the system is atomized, dispersed across countless apartments in the city’s richest and poorest corners and linked only by the internet and occasional phonecalls.

The challenges are enormous. Some city schools have no prior experience with remote learning. Not every student’s parent or guardian is tech-savvy or even available in the day to supervise schoolwork. The school system serves many children with special needs, including those in the care of Wacha, who specializes in teaching children with autism and cognitive impairment.

Parents spoke of trying to find a quiet corner in cramped apartments for their children to crack on with assignments.

“My husband’s going to be working from the kitchen counter and he’s going to be on the phone,” said Rosie Creamer, whose son, Charlie, is a 9-year-old fourth-grader at Manhattan’s Public School 40.

Charlie would have to sit at his desk in his room, and Creamer had resigned herself to having to sit with him, “because if he can get out of doing it, he will.”

New York is an epicenter of the pandemic with nearly 17,000 cases and more than 115 deaths.

GOOGLE CLASSROOM

Classrooms closed a week ago in New York as COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the new coronavirus, accelerated through the crowded city, although families can still pick up meals from outside school buildings.

Since then, teachers have been busy revising their lesson plans and sharing tips with stressed parents on how they make children focus on their work.

Many schools are using the Google Classroom service, posting assignments to be completed by students as and when they can during the week while confined at home with their families. City officials have had to lend out tens of thousands of school laptops so no child is left digitally marooned.

Mina Leisure, an English-language teacher at the Urban Assembly Gateway School for Technology in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen, said at least one of her students only had access to a smartphone, less than ideal for the writing assignments she was setting.

“I told him if you write on a piece of paper and take a picture on your phone, that’s fine,” she said.

Leisure’s school has decided to set assignments on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and to spend Tuesdays and Thursdays checking in with students and parents. Her students, like much of their generation, seem allergic to speaking on the phone, so she anticipates a lot of conversing by text messages.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; editing by Bill Tarrant and Grant McCool)

Under Europe’s virus lockdown, social media proves a lifeline

By Luke Baker

LONDON (Reuters) – Hundreds of millions of Europeans are getting to grips with weeks of a massively contracted existence under lockdown.

The goal is clear and very serious — reduce the spread of a deadly virus, keep critical medical resources and hospital beds free for the most vulnerable, save lives.

But behind that sobering objective lies a new challenge for many: hours inside the same four walls, no office chatter, no social contact, kids to entertain (if you have them and they are not in school), the lure of the fridge.

The reality of the new reality is that social media has become a near-essential resource. Whether for news, shared experiences, comic relief or a heated discussion, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have become a lifeline to many.

While in Italy, tenors and the less tuneful have taken to singing songs from their balconies to cheer up neighbors and build solidarity, videos of the performances have entertained millions far beyond Italy on social media.

Chris Martin, lead singer of the band Coldplay, took to Facebook on Monday to put on a live gig for people self-isolating, tagging it #TogetherAtHome. Singer John Legend took up the baton and said he would do the same on Tuesday.

For anyone tracking the ins and outs of the virus, whether infection rates, epidemiological research, or the infection lag between Italy and its neighbors, Twitter is a constant source of information (and, be warned, misinformation).

While European leaders have been holding news conferences or delivering televised addresses, these are at best once a day.

Online, there is a constant stream of news, commentary from experts, graphs analyzing the virus, and videos from people in Italy (which is 10-14 days ahead in terms of the infection spread) recounting what they wished they had known 10 days ago.

As working from home (#WFH on Twitter) becomes the norm, there are tips on how best to do it, where to set up a desk, how to stay focused, and if you don’t have a desk, how an ironing board can double as an excellent, adjustable alternative.

Among the tips for those doing conference calls from home are the obvious — make sure to get out of your pyjamas and brush your hair, even if you don’t necessarily have to be wearing trousers if you’re sitting behind a desk.

On Facebook, home workouts have proved popular, with people posting the best ways of staying fit while confined to a room. One popular video involves a woman doing a routine around a load of toilet rolls, which have been the object of hoarding by consumers worried about the impact of the virus.

As always, pets have proved a hit. Alongside WFH advice, many have been posting pictures of their cats and dogs, some of which look surprised by all the sudden unexpected attention.

For many, the surge in social media use in recent years has been an awful contradiction — rather than making people more friendly, it has tended to cut them off, cause division and fuel anger and resentment, not sociability.

But as Europe adjusts to the reality of self-isolation, there are signs social media can bring out the best in people, not just the boastful or argumentative bits many decry.

On Twitter, alongside advice on working from home or looking after elderly relatives, users are opening their direct messages, allowing anyone to contact them, and inviting those who want to talk or share concerns to get in touch.

(Editing by Alexandra Hudson)

Streets deserted as Italy imposes unprecedented coronavirus lockdown

By Angelo Amante and Giselda Vagnoni

ROME (Reuters) – Italy faced an unprecedented lockdown on Tuesday that left streets in the capital Rome and other cities deserted after the government extended a clampdown across the entire country in a bid to slow Europe’s worst outbreak of the coronavirus.

The measures, announced late on Monday by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, widen steps already taken in the rich northern region of Lombardy and parts of neighboring provinces, restricting movement and banning public gatherings.

“The future of Italy is in our hands. Let us all do our part, by giving up something for our collective good,” Conte said in a tweet, encouraging people to take personal responsibility.

The latest steps came after data showed the coronavirus outbreak continuing to spread, with 9,172 positive cases recorded as of Monday and 463 deaths, heavily concentrated in the prosperous northern regions of Lombardy, Emilia Romagna and Veneto.

An empty restaurant in a virtually deserted St. Mark’s Square after a decree orders for the whole of Italy to be on lockdown in an unprecedented clampdown aimed at beating the coronavirus, in Venice, Italy, March 10, 2020. REUTERS/Manuel Silvestri

In Rome, cars circulated freely under a clear blue sky in the normally traffic-clogged center and commuters could find seats in the usually packed underground system during rush hour.

Rome landmarks including the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, the Spanish Steps and St Peter’s Square in the Vatican were closed or empty, with police telling tourists to return to their hotels.

For at least the next three weeks, people have been told to stay at home if possible, moving only for reasons of work, health needs or emergencies. Anyone traveling will have to carry a document declaring their reasons and schools and universities will remain closed.

Outdoor events, including sports fixtures, have been suspended, while bars and restaurants will have to close from 6 p.m. Shops are allowed to remain open as long as customers maintain a minimum distance of a meter between each other.

“The whole of Italy is closed now,” was the headline in Corriere della Sera, the country’s largest circulation daily.

In the wake of the clampdown, neighboring Austria said it would deny entry to people arriving from Italy, while British Airways canceled all flights to and from the country.

SEVERE CONTROLS

The measures are some of the most severe controls imposed on a Western country since the Second World War and already there have been questions about how effectively they can be enforced across a country of 60 million people.

Shortly after Conte announced them, shoppers in Rome rushed to late-night supermarkets to stock up on food and basic necessities, prompting the government to declare that supplies would be guaranteed and urging people not to panic buy.

“You’ve also got the worry that the supermarkets will be emptied out of fear. If people keep over-buying there won’t be any water left,” said building superintendent Gianni, who like many Italians drinks bottled water.

“They should make people do it with an identity card, with one case per family,” he said, refusing to give his surname.

In the financial capital Milan, already under stricter controls, the situation was similar, with many shops and businesses open but far fewer people than normal on the streets.

The World Health Organization has praised Italy’s “aggressive” response to the crisis, since the first cases emerged near Milan almost three weeks ago, saying it could help contain the spread of the disease from its northern epicenter.

But the economic cost has been huge, with sectors from manufacturing to tourism reporting a collapse in orders that will impact for months to come.

On Monday, the Milan stock exchange dropped over 11% and Italy’s borrowing costs shot up, reviving fears that an economy already on the brink of recession and struggling under the euro zone’s second-heaviest debt pile could be plunged into crisis.

The market recovered some ground on Tuesday, with the all-share index up almost 3% in early trade.

Conte has already promised “massive shock therapy” to help deal with the immediate economic impact of the crisis and on Tuesday, Industry Minister Stefano Patuanelli said the government would approve measures worth around 10 billion euros.

As well as pressing the European Union to relax its strict borrowing rules, he said the government was also working on temporarily suspending payments of bills, taxes and mortgages to ease pressure on small firms and households.

(Additional reporting by Cristiano Corvino, Guglielmo Mangiapane; Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Gavin Jones and Alison Williams)