Tag Archives: Pandemic

Major U.S. airlines endorse temperature checks for passengers

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A major U.S. airline trade group on Saturday said it backed the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checking the temperatures of passengers and customer-facing employees during the coronavirus pandemic.

Airlines for America, which represents the largest U.S. airlines including American Airlines <AAL.O>, United Airlines <UAL.O>, Delta Air Lines <DAL.N> and Southwest Airlines <LUV.N>, said the checks “will add an extra layer of protection for passengers as well as airline and airport employees. Temperature checks also will provide additional public confidence that is critical to relaunching air travel and our nation’s economy.”

A U.S. official said Saturday no decision has been made on whether to mandate the checks, but said the issue is the subject of extensive talks among government agencies and with U.S. airlines and added a decision could potentially be made as early as next week.

One possible route would be for a pilot project or to initially begin temperature checks at the largest U.S. airports. Questions remain about what the government would do if someone had a high temperature and was turned away from a flight.

U.S. officials said the temperature checks would not eliminate the risk of coronavirus cases but could act as a deterrent to prevent people who were not feeling well from traveling.

TSA Administrator David Pekoske told employees during a town hall meeting Wednesday that no decision had been made regarding possible temperature checks of passengers at airports and that questions remained about where such checks might take place and which agency might perform them.

“It’s been a discussion that’s been ongoing for several weeks now,” he said.

A TSA spokesman did not immediately comment Saturday.

Frontier Airlines said on Thursday it would begin temperature screenings for all passengers and crew members on June 1 and bar anyone with a temperature at or exceeding 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit (38 C).

The move, the first among major U.S. airlines, followed the industry mandating facial coverings for all passengers and heightened cleaning procedures to address coronavirus concerns.

The airline group said having temperature checks performed by the TSA “will ensure that procedures are standardized.”

The endorsement comes amid signs of a modest travel rebound from historic lows. On Friday, TSA screened 215,444 people at airport checkpoints, the first time the number topped 200,000 since March 26. But that is still a fraction of the 2.6 million screened on the equivalent day last year.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chris Reese)

U.S. Post Office board meets as COVID takes its toll and funding dries up

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Postal Service’s Board of Governors meets on Friday at a critical juncture as it faces accusations from the White House that it charges package shippers such as Amazon.com too little and as the new coronavirus cuts its revenue by about $13 billion.

The meeting also comes two days after the governors announced that they had selected Republican donor Louis DeJoy to be the next postmaster general to replace a retiring Megan Brennan.

Top of mind for the governors will be the budget shortfall, according to a person knowledgeable about the agenda.

The service, which was struggling before efforts to stop the spread of the new coronavirus prompted a widespread economic shutdown, is funded entirely through services and postage and has been hurt by advertisers’ decision to reduce mail during the pandemic.

The U.S. Congress has authorized the Treasury Department to lend it up to $10 billion as part of a $2.3 trillion coronavirus stimulus package. President Donald Trump has threatened to block that aid.

Since early in his administration, the president has criticized the post office, saying it was poorly run and charges too little to deliver packages. Many of those packages are sent by online retailers such as Amazon.com, whose founder and CEO Jeff Bezos also owns the Washington Post, which has been critical of the president.

Without assistance, the service may run out of money in September, even as Americans increasingly turn to online shopping as the pandemic batters the U.S. economy. The current postmaster general told a congressional committee last month that the new coronavirus alone could mean $13 billion in lost revenue this year.

The pandemic has also caused a surge of interest in expanding options to vote by mail rather than crowding into polling places, making it more important that funding extends past November for the presidential election.

The board meeting will also address the post office’s response to COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus, including employee safety, according to a person knowledgeable about the agenda.

The disease has killed more than 50 of the service’s 600,000 workers, said James Horwitz, a spokesman for the American Postal Workers Union. A spokesman for the postal service declined to confirm the deaths. COVID-19 has killed more than 75,000 Americans.

The U.S. Postal Service has been struggling for years as online communication replaces letters, and after a 2006 law required it to pre-fund its employee-pension and retirement health care costs for the next seventy-five years.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

‘The government is failing us’: Laid-off Americans struggle in coronavirus crisis

By Andy Sullivan and Brad Brooks

(Reuters) – For Claudia Alejandra, unemployment has become a full-time job.

Since losing her position at the makeup counter at the Macy’s department store in Orlando, Florida, on March 28, Alejandra spends her days trying to secure the unemployment benefits that should have arrived weeks ago, sometimes placing more than 100 calls a day.

The online application, a 10-hour ordeal of error messages, ended with a notice that her identity could not be verified. If she’s lucky, she’ll reach a representative who will say there’s nothing they can do to help. Otherwise, it’s a busy signal, or an hours-long wait on hold, followed by a sudden hang-up.

Alejandra, 37, cashed out her retirement fund — $800, a year’s worth of savings — to make the monthly payments on her 2010 Mazda, but doesn’t know how she’ll pay the rent for her studio apartment or her phone bill. Longer-term goals — a promotion, a family, a house of her own — seem even more elusive.

Alejandra’s experience is similar to that of more than two dozen Americans thrown out of work during the coronavirus pandemic who Reuters interviewed over the past week.

While U.S. government guidelines say jobless workers who qualify for assistance should get payments within three weeks of applying, many — like Alejandra — are waiting twice that long. Increasingly desperate, some are lining up at food banks or bargaining with landlords to postpone bills. Most fill their days seeking answers from overwhelmed state bureaucracies.

Alejandra has not heard anything from the state — though she has gotten a fundraising email from Republican Senator Rick Scott, who set up the current unemployment system during his tenure as governor.

“I feel like the government is failing us,” she said in a telephone interview.

Florida has overhauled and expanded the computer system and brought in 2,000 agents to field calls, and plans an investigation of the system’s failings, Governor Ron DeSantis said at a Monday news conference. People who applied in March and haven’t gotten payments yet likely have not provided all of the required information or might not be eligible, he said.

“You’ve started to see a really significant volume of payments going out, and it’s really taken a major overhaul behind the scenes,” he said. His office did not respond to an email with detailed questions on the situation.

In the past six weeks, states have struggled to process over 33 million jobless claims, more than they typically see in a year. That figure does not capture those who have been unable to even file a claim due to bureaucratic hurdles — up to 14 million more, according to an Economic Policy Institute study released last week.

The Reuters interviews across four states — Florida, Michigan, Arizona and Minnesota — revealed a wide disparity in whether or when people received payments depending on where they live. In Minnesota, where state employees field queries on social media platforms as well as by phone, six out of seven jobless people said they were getting benefits — sometimes more than they were earning before.

In Florida, where a buggy computer system has spurred widespread outrage, only three out of eight people said they were getting payments, while all six people interviewed in Arizona and all eight in Michigan said they had not yet received payment.

The interviews, to be sure, do not represent a scientific sample of Americans’ experiences with jobless benefit systems. But the people interviewed described similar situations in each state. Some who had begun to be paid benefits said they believed public servants were doing their best to respond to a fast-moving crisis, but even those described difficulties in getting the system to work.

All four states face high levels of jobless claims and will be important in the Nov. 3 presidential election. The governors of Florida and Arizona are Republicans, those of Michigan and Minnesota Democrats.

‘I JUST NEED WHAT I’M OWED’

Before the pandemic, Detroit restaurant server Deshan Hedrick used to worry about saving for a new home. Now she has a new problem: where to find food to last her through the next few days.

Hedrick, who lives in a small house with a roommate and had never been laid off in 25 years of waitressing, hasn’t received an unemployment payment since she lost her job on March 16.

“I don’t know who to blame. I just need what I’m owed,” she said.

By one measure, Michigan is a relative success story. As of April 25, the state had enrolled 21.1% of eligible working-age adults into unemployment programs, the third-highest rate in the country and above the national rate of 13.3%, U.S. Labor Department figures show.

That’s little comfort to Hedrick, 40, who says she wrestled for more than a month with a website for processing claims that repeatedly failed and couldn’t get through by phone. Her claim wasn’t accepted until April 18. Under federal guidelines, she should have received funds by early April.

Hedrick, who has no kids and grew up poor in Detroit, earned about $3,200 a month at Starter’s Bar and Grill. By mid-April, she exhausted her $1,700 in savings. Now she’s surviving on noodles and canned soup donated by friends and faces a $4,000 backlog of bills — from utilities and insurance to her monthly rent of $825.

Michigan’s Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity spokeswoman Erica Quealy acknowledged there have been delays but said that it has extended call center hours due to the surge in demand and delays, and has quadrupled the number of staffers helping customers.

Unemployment brought a different set of concerns for Phoenix resident Jamell Verse, who suffers from a chronic inflammatory disease called ankylosing spondylitis that causes severe pain in his joints, eyes and stomach.

His employer-based health insurance ended after he lost his job as an account executive on April 9. Now, Verse doesn’t know how he’ll pay for medication that costs $2,000 per month — or a visit to the hospital.

“When the disease flares up it’s quick and it’s violent and it’s with no notice,” he said.

Arizona Republican Governor Doug Ducey eased some restrictions in March, allowing recipients to get payments sooner and no longer requiring proof they are looking for work. But as of April 25, just 5.9% of eligible workers received those benefits, the fourth-lowest rate in the nation, according to a Reuters analysis of Labor Department data.

Verse, 41, says he applied for unemployment on April 10, the day after he lost his job but has yet to receive a payment — or a response of any sort. Like applications in most other states, Verse’s claim has been held up by anti-fraud measures designed to weed out those who don’t qualify. A letter asking him to confirm his application arrived on the day it was due, prompting a scramble to find a fax machine to get it back on time.

The state requires him to speak with a representative before he can get his payments, but the phone lines have been jammed. He says he calls 100 times a day, sometimes starting two hours before the phone lines open at 7 a.m. local time on weekdays in hopes of snagging a spot at the front of the virtual line.

Last week Verse went to the state’s unemployment agency office. Staffers told him to call the same number he has been trying for weeks. “All they were doing was telling people to call the phone numbers that are listed online,” Verse said. “That upset me even more, because their phone lines are all backed up.”

The Arizona Department of Economic Security, which administers unemployment benefits, said it has added 310 staffers since the pandemic began and was hiring 200 more. The state has also contracted with a private-sector call center to help keep up with high call volumes. Officials in Arizona and the three other states declined to discuss the specifics of the cases of the people Reuters interviewed.

PRIORITIES: MORTGAGE, FOOD AND DIAPERS

The picture appears brighter in Minnesota, which says a worker who files a claim can expect to receive their first payment that same week. The state provides a maximum weekly payment of $740, one of the highest figures in the United States. As of April 18, the state had registered of 13.8% its covered workforce, slightly better than the national average.

As elsewhere, Minnesota initially faced a deluge of applications. Residents interviewed by Reuters say they struggled to reach someone by phone, especially in the first half of April.

Car salesman Preston Jorgensen estimates he placed 200 calls a day using an automatic redialer for two weeks after his application was rejected on April 5, encountering busy signals each time. After weeks of sleuthing — contacting elected representatives, trading tips on social media, and calling other state offices — he thought he caught a break when he was transferred to a line that appeared to work. It rang and he got through. But after five hours on hold, he was disconnected.

Two weeks ago, a state employee called to tell him that his claim had been resolved.

Jorgensen, 36, says his monthly payment of $1,340 falls short of the $8,000 or so he used to earn each month, but covers his mortgage payments and food and diapers for his three young children. His wife, a stay-at-home mother, is expecting another child. The weeks spent trying to resolve his claim were frustrating, he says, but he expressed sympathy for overwhelmed state workers.

“It’s a new time for us as a country and they’re trying to do what they can,” he said.

The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development said it was working to process the high volume of applicants and enroll eligible people as fast as possible.

In Florida, Governor DeSantis has faced an angry backlash as his state has failed to deliver for hundreds of thousands of jobless residents.

As of April 25, the state was providing benefits to just 4.1% of its covered workforce, the lowest in the nation. In response to a request for comment, state officials cited state figures showing that as of Tuesday 43% of the 1.1 million people who applied for unemployment benefits received payments.

“I’m willing to take anything at this point,” said Jessica Da Silva, 40, was laid off from her restaurant job in the coastal city of Port St. Lucie and was told she qualified for state and federal benefits that totaled about half the $1,200 or so she typically earned in a week. As she and her husband juggle bills and defer payments, she’s riding a bicycle to reduce stress.

“It does a number on you — it causes loss of sleep, it causes you to either overeat, or not eat at all,” said Da Silva.

(Reporting by Andy Sullivan in Washington and Brad Brooks in Austin, Texas; Editing by Scott Malone and Jason Szep)

U.S. states plow ahead with reopening; Trump warns death toll could hit 100,000

By Susan Heavey and Maria Caspani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Ohio and other U.S. states on Monday planned to ease more restrictions on businesses even as President Donald Trump acknowledged that as many as 100,000 Americans could die in a pandemic that has also decimated the U.S. economy.

In Ohio, Governor Mike DeWine was allowing construction and manufacturing to reopen on Monday, and letting office workers return. Retail shops and many consumer services were due to resume operations on May 12.

To reopen, businesses must meet state requirements that workers wear face coverings and stay at least six feet apart, and employers sanitize their workplaces. DeWine has urged as many workers as possible to work from home.

“It’s a delicate balance,” he told MSNBC on Monday.

About half of all U.S. states have lifted shutdowns, at least partially, as the number of new cases of the COVID-19 illness has begun to decline or level off in many places, though infections are still rising in others.

Health experts have warned of a possible resurgence of the virus if states rushed to restart their battered economies too early and without a widespread testing and tracing network in place.

COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus, has infected more than 1.1 million people in the United States and killed nearly 68,000.

Trump late on Sunday acknowledged the U.S. death toll from the disease would exceed previous projections cited by the White House.

“We’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people. That’s a horrible thing,” Trump said on Fox News on Sunday night. As recently as Friday the president said he hoped fewer than 100,000 Americans would die and earlier in the week had talked of 60,000 to 70,000 deaths.

‘MIXED BAG’

Scott Gottlieb, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, said on Sunday the country was seeing a “mixed bag” of results from coronavirus mitigation efforts.

He said about 20 states had experienced a rising number of new cases including Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, North Carolina Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Virginia reported a record number of deaths on Sunday, up 44 for a total of 660.

“We expected that we would start seeing more significant declines in new cases and deaths around the nation at this point. And we’re just not seeing that,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “If we don’t snuff this out more and you have this slow burn of infection, it can ignite at any time.”

But Democratic Governor Jared Polis of Colorado on Monday said that residents could not be kept at home indefinitely.

“Stay-at-home is so unsustainable,” Polis told FOX News’s “Fox and Friends” program, adding that he hoped his state’s partial reopening that began on April 27 could help ease the burden on state unemployment benefit filings.

“We have to start being able to do this in a way that’s psychologically sustainable, economically sustainable, but also works form a health perspective so we don’t overwhelm our hospital system.”

A weekend of warm weather in many parts of the country put enforcement of social-distancing rules to the test in densely populated metropolitan areas such as New York City and Washington, D.C.

On Saturday, thousands of people gathered on the National Mall in Washington to view a U.S. Navy flyover to honor healthcare workers and others battling the pandemic.

In New York City, the warmest weather yet this spring caused picnickers and sunbathers to flock to green spaces in Manhattan. Photos on social media showed crowded conditions at the Christopher Street Pier in Greenwich Village and other open spaces.

Last week, California ordered beaches in Orange County to close, after crowds defied public health guidelines to throng the popular shoreline. Police in the county’s Huntington Beach said people were complying on Sunday.

In a break from tradition caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday for the first time heard arguments in a case by teleconference – and even typically silent Justice Clarence Thomas asked questions.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington, Writing by Maria Caspani, Editing by Howard Goller)

U.S. airlines now requiring masks, promise more safety measures

By Tracy Rucinski and David Shepardson

(Reuters) – With the largest U.S. airlines now set to mandate – and provide – facial coverings for all passengers over the next two weeks, many are turning their focus to other measures to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus during air travel.

United Airlines Holdings Inc., for example, told journalists on Friday that it has purchased hundreds of hospital-type electrostatic fogging machines that it will start using in June to decontaminate airplane cabin surfaces and crevices before every flight.

The measures are among the steps airlines are taking to help passengers feel more comfortable about flying in the midst of the pandemic, which has decimated travel demand.

The industry, through lobby Airlines for America, has also begun discussions with policymakers in Washington on measures such as virus testing and pre-boarding temperature checks, United Chief Communications Officer Josh Earnest said.

Southwest Airlines Co and Alaska Airlines on Friday joined other major airlines in imposing facial coverings.

JetBlue Airways Corp <JBLU.O> was the first to mandate such a policy, and on Thursday United, Delta Air Lines Inc. American Airlines Group Inc  and low-cost carrier Frontier Airlines, which is owned by private equity firm Indigo Partners LLC, followed suit.

The largest airlines provide masks for passengers who do not have their own facial covering. United noted that recent supply issues with masks have now eased.

The requirements are being made by airlines on an individual basis and will be included in the contracts of carriage and explained on their websites. They are not mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration, which has said that it only has the authority to regulate matters that are directly tied to air safety.

Asked how airlines would enforce the policy, United’s Earnest said: “We’re gonna ask customers to comply with the requirement.”

Peter DeFazio, chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, applauded the airlines’ “common-sense measure” on Friday while calling on the U.S. government to “provide clear and consistent policies that reflect the seriousness of this global pandemic.”

Airlines have also made face coverings mandatory for employees.

In Canada, regulators started requiring that passengers wear a non-medical mask or face covering during the boarding process and flights last month, and the European Commission has said that it is working on a set of rules for the safe reopening of air travel.

(Reporting by David Shepardson and Tracy Rucinski; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Steve Orlofsky)

Facing meat shortages, some Americans turn to hunting during pandemic

By Andrew Hay

TAOS, N.M. (Reuters) – David Elliot first thought of shooting an elk to help feed family and friends back in January when the United States reported its first novel coronavirus case.

Elliot, emergency manager at Holy Cross Hospital in Taos, New Mexico, had always wanted to go big-game hunting and, with the pandemic spreading, there seemed no better time to try to fill his freezer with free-range, super-lean meat.

So for the first time in his life, despite not owning a rifle or ever having hunted large animals, he put his name in for New Mexico’s annual elk permit draw.

With some U.S. meat processors halting operations as workers fall ill, companies warning of shortages, and people having more time on their hands and possibly less money due to shutdowns and layoffs, he is among a growing number of Americans turning to hunting for food, according to state data and hunting groups.

“I understand some people might be driven by like antlers or some sort of glory. I don’t want to do that,” said Elliot, 37, who received a prized permit to shoot a female elk in an area of Taos County where herds of the animal graze in vast plains studded with extinct volcanoes.

Elliot plans to borrow a rifle and maybe even a horse to carry the elk back to his vehicle after the hunt in November. “I want to make sure it’s a clean, humane shot, as much as possible, and get a bunch of food.”

Game and fish agencies from Minnesota to New Mexico have reported an increase in either hunting license sales, permit applications, or both this spring.

Indiana saw a 28% jump in turkey license sales during the first week of the season as hunters likely had more time to get out into the woods, said Marty Benson, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Natural Resources.

Firearm manufacturers have reported sales increases, and the FBI carried out 3.74 million background checks in March, a record for any month.

That followed a decline of 255,000 in the number of hunters between 2016 and 2020, based on U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service license data, a 2% fall, as fewer young people took up the activity, hunting advocates say.

Hank Forester of Quality Deer Management Association expects a resurgence after many Americans saw empty meat shelves at the grocery store for the first time during March and April.

“People are starting to consider self-reliance and where their food comes from,” said Forester of the hunter research and training group. “We’re all born hunters.”

‘MENTAL CLEANSE’

Teachers Brian Van Nevel and Nathaniel Evans get up at 4 a.m. to try to be first into the forests around Taos to hunt wild turkey.

Evans, a middle-school teacher, has seen a lot more people stalking birds this year.

A town councilor as well, he is hunting not just for food but to reconnect with himself at a time when he is guiding Taos’ response to the pandemic as well as teaching online classes.

“Its been so important for me, being able to go out and kind of cleanse my mental card and just go and be present, you really have to be present, and quiet and listening,” said Evans, 38, who in April shot a 17-pound (7.7-kg) bird.

Some states such as Washington and Illinois closed state lands as the virus spread, prompting the National Rifle Association to lobby governors to keep them open to allow people to hunt for food.

Officials in Washington issued 10 poaching charges between March 25 and April 26 compared with three in the year-earlier period, the state’s Fish and Wildlife Department reported.

‘A GOOD IDEA’

Nina Stafford, 42, a building contractor from Fayetteville, Georgia, killed her first deer in January. She described the experience as “thrilling, exciting and remorseful for the deer.”

“The coronavirus has only made me want to go and do it more so that I don’t have that scared feeling of where’s my next meal going to come from,” said Stafford, who also grows vegetables and fruit.

To be sure, stocks of species like wild turkey can only sustain so many hunters. Wildlife ecologists Michael Chamberlain and Brett Collier fear the turkey’s existing population decline will steepen this spring.

Turkey hunter numbers in wildlife management areas in Georgia increased 47% this year from 2019, while turkeys killed during the first 23 days of the season rose 26%, despite no recent increase in bird numbers, the ecologists, respectively with the University of Georgia and Louisiana State University, wrote in a report, citing state department of natural resources preliminary data.

Not all states have reported an increase in hunting license applications, with both California and Florida seeing declines.

Still, big game such as deer could see similar pressure in the autumn as hunters have more time to max out “bag limits,” which in the case of Georgia is 12 animals, the ecologists said.

Elk hunts in most states are limited to a single animal per hunter who draws a permit in an annual lottery. Elliot sees no downside to paying $60 for a tag that could allow him to get close to 200 pounds (91 kg) of meat, if he can get a cow elk.

“It’s not just because what’s going on in the world right now. Frankly I don’t make that much money, so like this is just a good idea anyway,” said Elliot.

(Reporting by Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Editing by Bill Tarrant, Daniel Wallis and Peter Cooney)

Overnight closure of New York subways may presage bigger changes

By Nathan Layne

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York City’s subway, the ear-splitting, nerve-jangling system that New Yorkers and tourists alike love to hate, is taking the unprecedented step of halting overnight service in order to clean train cars, a likely prelude to bigger changes as the largest U.S. mass transit system works to rebound from a pandemic that has slashed ridership.

The subway system, whose more than 600 miles of track criss-cross four of New York’s five boroughs, will close between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. beginning May 6 to allow crews to disinfect the cars each night to prevent further spread of the novel coronavirus, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Thursday. The city’s buses will also be cleaned every night, he said.

Commuter advocates and transit experts saw the move, the first for a subway system known for its round-the-clock service, as signaling a period of sweeping change for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state-controlled agency that oversees a system that until recently carried 9 million passengers a day.

The MTA is talking with transport agencies around the world to glean best practices while looking at how to enforce social distancing and at staggered hours for businesses returning to work, an issue being discussed with governors and corporate and labor leaders, a spokesman for the agency said.

MTA’s plan to “bring riders back” to the transit system will focus on safety, the agency’s spokeswoman, Abbey Collins, said. “We will also be asking our customers to change their behavior, including wearing face coverings.”

The changes come as the MTA grapples with a more than 90% decline in subway ridership as New York locked down to fight the coronavirus. The agency has also stopped collecting bus fares in order to protect its drivers, further denting revenues.

Earlier this month MTA Chairman Pat Foye asked for another $3.9 billion in federal aid, on top of the $3.8 billion already allocated to the agency, to cover pandemic-related costs expected to climb as high as $8.5 billion.

Foye has said federal funding also is needed to preserve a $51.5 billion capital budget for 2020-2024 aimed at modernizing the subway’s antiquated signal systems and expansion projects.

Philip Plotch, the author of “Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City,” said the MTA would have to look at cutting capacity for each subway car to achieve some measure of social distancing. Under normal conditions, each car can carry about 100 riders, though he expects ridership to remain depressed for some time.

“A lot of businesses are not going to want to open,” he said. “Clearly you are not going to have the same level of tourists, and schools are going to be slow for a while.”

“A SHADOW OF ITS FORMER SELF”

New York has been at the center of the pandemic in the United States, accounting for nearly half of the 60,000 Americans killed by COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.

When the virus hit, the city was in the process of rewriting the bus routes in all five boroughs, part of a reform of a transit system that has been criticized for not serving the communities most in need.

Ben Fried, a spokesman at TransitCenter, a foundation which advocates for improving public transit systems, pointed to San Francisco’s move to concentrate bus service on the highest ridership lines and serve hospitals and low-income areas as a potential model for New York.

“I think that is the way to position transit for the future and for safe operations in a post-COVID world,” Fried said. “If the bus system can absorb that it means there is going to be less crowding on the subway. Even if it’s 5 to 10 percent it would be significant.”

Danny Pearlstein, policy and communications director at Riders Alliance, a commuter advocacy group, said the closing of early-morning subway service should be temporary. It is more important that the MTA look at ways to increase the frequency of subway service, especially during rush hour, he said, though that would rely on federal funding that may or may not materialize.

Pearlstein also advocated a rethink to cater train and bus service more toward essential workers such as nurses and grocery and pharmacy clerks, who may take earlier- or later-than-normal trains.

“The subway has been seen as great equalizer. What we need now is equitable service,” Pearlstein said. “If New York is not going be a shadow of its former self, transit has to work for people in different ways than it has in the past.”

(Reporting by Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Texas, Ohio join array of U.S. states reopening their economies

By Maria Caspani

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Texas and Ohio pushed ahead on Friday with a phased relaxation of restrictions that U.S. states put in place weeks ago to curb the coronavirus pandemic, as Georgia took another step toward a full restart by allowing all businesses to reopen.

With White House guidelines for reopening having expired on Thursday, half of all U.S. states were forging ahead with a patchwork of strategies to allow businesses, from restaurants and retailers to construction and manufacturing, to emerge from a month of dormancy.

In Texas, one of the most populous U.S. states, all retail stores, restaurants, movie theaters and malls could resume activity on Friday while limiting capacity to 25% of their listed occupancy, on orders of Governor Greg Abbott.

Ohio will start by allowing non-essential surgeries on Friday and then move to open construction and manufacturing on Monday, and retail shops and many consumer services on May 12, Governor Mike DeWine said earlier this week.

States are feeling enormous pressure to reopen businesses and restore social life, despite a lack of wide-scale virus testing and other safeguards urged by health experts, as the outbreak appears to have waned across many parts of the country.

No companies are required to reopen and it was unclear how many business owners and their employees would return to work, and how many patrons would venture back into stores and restaurants.

U.S. Labor Department data released on Thursday showed some 30 million Americans had sought unemployment benefits since March 21. The jobless toll amounts to more than 18.4% of the U.S. working-age population, a level not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

GEORGIA LEADS WAY

States, mostly in the South, the Midwest and mountain West, have moved to relax restrictions since Georgia led the way late last week. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp said late on Thursday he was relaxing his state’s month-long shelter-in-place orders, allowing all businesses to reopen on Friday.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said late on Thursday he was concerned about states and communities “leapfrogging” over the first phase of federal guidelines for reopening.

“Obviously, you could get away with that, but you’re making a really significant risk,” Fauci told CNN.

Phase One of the White House “Opening Up America Again” guidelines recommends states and regions satisfy a series of criteria including a 14-day decline in cases of the COVID-19 disease caused by the virus, a robust testing program and the healthcare capacity to handle a possible surge.

They also recommend that Americans “maximize physical distance” and avoid social settings of more than 10 people and that employers encourage telework whenever possible and a gradual return to the workplace.

Large venues that include sit-down dining, movie theaters, sporting venues and places of worship can operate under “strict physical distancing protocols,” the guidelines state.

The number of coronavirus cases is still climbing in many parts of the country, although peaks appear to have been reached in New York state, the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, and other places.

Arizona, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin all reported a record number of new cases on Thursday, though greater testing could account for some of the increases, revealing infections present but previously undetected.

Several states, including Indiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas and West Virginia, posted new highs in their daily death tolls.

As of late on Thursday, the number of known infections nationwide had climbed to well over 1 million, including nearly 63,000 deaths, far exceeding the tally of American war dead from all the years of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.

(Reporting by Maria Caspani, Jessica Resnick-Ault in New York, Doina Chiacu in Washington and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Writing by Maria Caspani; Editing by Howard Goller)

Farmers prosper in pandemic as Americans shop local

Farmers prosper in pandemic as Americans shop local
By Nellie Peyton

WASHINGTON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – With restaurants shut and grocery stores posing a coronavirus risk, some Americans are ordering food directly from the farm – a trend small-scale producers hope will outlast the pandemic.

It could be one of the few economic upsides to a crisis that has emptied high streets and felled business as Americans lock down against the fast-spreading novel coronavirus.

In northern Wisconsin, a farmers’ collective said they are making thousands of dollars a week in a season when sales are normally zero.

By selling to people instead of restaurants, Illinois farmers said revenues are close to an all-time high.

Many farmers are adopting online ordering and home delivery, transforming old-fashioned farms into consumer-friendly outlets.

“In two or three weeks we accelerated like five to ten years of growth and change in the industry,” said Simon Huntley, founder of Harvie, a company based in Pittsburgh that helps farmers market and sell their products online.

“I think we are getting a lot of new people into local food that have never tried buying from their local farmer before.”

Eating local is lauded as a way to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of transporting food long distances, although some studies have shown it is not always more climate-friendly.

Shorter supply chains boost resilience in a crisis and help small-scale sustainable farms, said Jayce Hafner, co-founder of FarmRaise, which helps farmers get grants and loans.

Growers across the country are vulnerable to economic shocks right now because of labour shortages, supply chain disruptions and fluctuating prices linked to the pandemic, she said.

“The beauty of the direct-to-consumer app is it allows a farmer to capture the value of their product at a near-to-retail price, and so it’s a really attractive option economically for a farmer,” Hafner said.

NEW EXPECTATIONS

Chris Duke, who owns a farm in Wisconsin, has managed a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program for years.

The CSA model gained popularity in the United States more than a decade ago. Typically customers pay a subscription fee to a farm then receive regular boxes of whatever is grown.

But with the spread of online shopping, shoppers are now used to getting what they want, when they want it, said Duke.

Using Harvie’s platform, his farm and 17 others in the area can offer customers 95 products, from vegetables to honey to meat, and their clients choose just what they want each week.

They had been thinking of doing this for a while, he said, but were only spurred to make the change when coronavirus hit.

“I love the CSA model, but the CSA model by itself is 30 years old, and a lot has changed in the food marketplace, in technology, in customer expectations,” Duke said. “It’s a totally different world now.”

Last week the farms made about $7,000 between them, which is huge for a season when not much is growing, he said.

He plans to keep the new model after the pandemic wanes.

CHALLENGES

Not all of the direct-to-consumer businesses are digital.

Marty Travis, a farmer in central Illinois, has been the middleman connecting local farms to restaurants for 16 years. He markets the products to chefs in the Chicago area, collects orders and distributes fresh produce each week.

When the novel coronavirus hit, he shifted gear and started selling to individuals – and was overwhelmed by demand.

“We could have 1,000 people tomorrow,” he said, but can only cater to 200 customers so had to cap orders accordingly.

He delivers to three dropoff spots in Chicago where people line up to collect – it is not home delivery but challenging nonetheless as farmers are used to bulk orders and packaging.

Proceeds are huge.

“We have to find these opportunities to celebrate some positive stuff,” said Travis, who is writing a book about how farmers can band together to feed communities.

Lisa Duff, the owner of a small family farm in Maryland, started offering customized, at-home deliveries last year and said it saved her when the restaurants and farmers’ markets she served closed in March.

Without a delivery person, she does most of the driving herself – which has been tough.

But she has also seen her customers nearly double.

“I’m hopeful that this will really truly help us find that local food is here to stay.”

(Reporting by Nellie Peyton, editing by Lyndsay Griffiths; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly. Visit http://news.trust.org)

California to close all beaches, state parks amid coronavirus concerns: memo

By Kanishka Singh

(Reuters) – California Governor Gavin Newsom will announce on Thursday the closure of all beaches and parks in the state amid concerns over the coronavirus pandemic after crowds jammed beaches last weekend, according to a memo seen by Reuters.

The memo was sent on Wednesday by the governor’s office to California’s police chiefs to plan ahead of Newsom’s announcement on Thursday.

“After the well-publicized media coverage of overcrowded beaches this past weekend, in violation of Governor Newsom’s Shelter in Place Order, the Governor will be announcing tomorrow that ALL beaches and all state parks in California will be closed, effective Friday, May 1st,” the memo read.

Newsom’s office and the California Police Chiefs Association did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

While Newsom, a Democrat, has said that curbside retail, manufacturing and other “lower-risk workplaces” should reopen in California within weeks as testing and contact-tracing improve, he has also said the state will step up enforcement of coronavirus-related public health restrictions after the scenes of crowded beaches last weekend.

Officials in the U.S. state’s Orange and Ventura Counties allowed access to their beaches during the warm spring weekend, prompting families and groups to head to the ocean.

The crowds on the beaches put at risk California’s progress in slowing the advance of the novel coronavirus, Newsom said on Monday.

The crowds also exemplified the tension that officials throughout the United States are dealing with as residents chafe under stay-at-home orders and some states begin to loosen them.

In response to the proposed closure of the state parks and beaches in California, Orange County Supervisor Donald Wagner said it was not a wise step.

“Medical professionals tell us the importance of fresh air and sunlight in fighting infectious disease, including mental health benefits,” Wagner said, adding that the order could undermine the cooperative attitude of the county’s residents.

A Reuters tally shows the United States has by far the world’s largest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases at more than a million, with total deaths topping 60,000 by late Wednesday.

Cases neared 3.2 million worldwide, with about 227,000 deaths from the highly contagious disease, Reuters calculations show.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Gareth Jones)