New York will close its bars and restaurants at 8pm on Monday night for ‘as long as necessary’ along with casinos, gyms and movie theaters as part of an effort with neighboring states Connecticut and New Jersey to stop the spread of coronavirus.
New Jersey has also launched a statewide ‘curfew’ between the hours of 8pm and 5am for all ‘non essential travel’ but it is unclear what that is or what will happen to anyone who does not follow the rules.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has not confirmed whether or not people will be able to go to work between those hours or how he plans to enforce it, but is only saying that he ‘strongly discourages’ anyone from leaving home between those hours.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the shutdown in a tweet on Monday morning after urging Trump to shut down the country to fight coronavirus and said the current ‘patchwork quilt’ system of some states being more vigilant than others is not working.
The order applies to New York City too.
The shut-down had been planned for Tuesday morning at 9am.
Cuomo sped it up on Monday, saying the tri-state decided to take matters into their own hands after a lack of action from the White House.
He earlier pleaded with President Trump to order shut downs across the country, saying the ‘patchwork quilt’ approach of seeing some states taking more vigilant action than others ‘is not working’.
There are more than 4,000 cases of coronavirus in the US and 71 people have died.
After Cuomo’s announcement, shift workers in bars and restaurants panicked and started asking how they would be able to pay their rent.
In Maryland, the city-wide shutdown will be in effect from 5pm tonight. It applies to restaurants, bars, gyms and movie theaters.
There has been no firm answer yet on how to alleviate the financial burden of the crisis on individuals.
White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow told DailyMail.com Monday said the administration ‘might’ get behind new proposals to give cash to American households in the neighborhood of $1,000 each per month.
In the United States, there are more than 3,800 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 69 deaths
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has advised officials across the United States to crack down on large gatherings of more than 50 people for at least eight weeks as the governors of California, Illinois and Ohio close all of the bars in their states
NEW JERSEY GOV: THIS IS NOT BUSINESS AS USUAL – THIS IS REAL
Gov. Phil Murphy announced he is ‘strongly discouraging’ anyone from leaving their homes between 8pm and 5am for all ‘non-essential travel’ but he didn’t say what that was or what the punishment would be
NJ Gov. Phil Murphy is is telling residents not to leave their homes between 8pm and 5am as part of a ‘curfew’ to battle coronavirus.
It is unclear how he plans to enforce it – he has not said whether or not he will arrest people or stop and ask them why they are out if they do venture outdoors in those hours.
Murpy is ‘strongly discouraging’ against all non-essential travel between those hours.
He is however yet to define what non-essential travel is.
In other cases, like in Hoboken which imposed a 10pm curfew on Sunday, people have been allowed to go to work and to stock up on food or go to hospitals.
Everything else is banned.
Gov. Murphy said he wanted to take action after watching videos of people ignoring the advice to social distance to go to bars and restaurants over the week.
‘I saw too many videos last night of packed bars, people passing bottles drinking from the same bottle, literally globbed on top of each other.
‘In short of shutting the entire state down, clipping establishments by a number of hours each night in particular we believe will have a meaningful, positive outcome in terms of social distancing,’ he said.
In an impassioned press conference on Monday afternoon, he warned people to take the crisis seriously.
‘This is not fake news. This is real. If we don’t have this right – it’s on me.
‘This is real. Stop believing folks who believe it isn’t real,’ he said.
In New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, all bars and restaurants will be forced to switch to take-out and delivery orders only from 8pm on Monday night.
In New York, Cuomo will relax liquor laws to allow people to order alcohol from their local bars and restaurants.
Movie theaters, theaters, gyms and casinos will close and will remain closed indefinitely.
He said the rules would last for ‘as long as necessary’ to cope with the crisis.
In Hoboken, New Jersey, a 10pm curfew is in place but it remains unclear how it is being enforced and what happens to anyone who breaks it.
Earlier, in an interview on Good Morning America on Monday, Gov. Cuomo said it made no sense for him to take harsh action in New York but have neighboring states like New Jersey and Connecticut not, because people would simply migrate there to keep living their lives and potentially spread the virus.
‘This government has to get more engaged.
‘There’s been no country that hasn’t handled this on a federalized level.
‘This patchwork quilt of policies doesn’t work. It makes no sense for me to do something in New York and New Jersey to do something else.
‘I close the bars? They go to jersey. You need the specific rules.
‘Every state cannot come up with its own rules, you’ll just have people going from state to state.
‘You’ll go to New Jersey, Connecticut, wherever you can be served.
‘That’s the last thing we want.
‘Set the national standards and let’s live with them,’ he said.
The joint effort came hours later.
Despite President Trump’s insistence that the pandemic was under ‘tremendous control’ over the weekend, health care experts are bracing for a tidal wave of patients.
There is grave concern over how the nation’s hospital system will cope with the onslaught of patients who will soon need care.
Over the weekend, experts predicted as many as 10 million people will need to be hospitalized because of the virus, but there are not even one million hospital beds in the country.
Cuomo has repeatedly requested the army corps of engineers to come to New York and start fitting out available buildings as hospitals, saying the ‘wave’ of the virus will ‘break’ on New York’s hospital system tomorrow if it they do not.
Trump said on Friday that the virus was under ‘tremendous control’ in the US. He has come under fire for his lack of federal rules
‘We have been behind this disease from day one.
‘We saw it develop in China, we weren’t ready and we’ve been playing catch up ever since.
‘You need to get ahead of this. It’s about the next war.
‘The next war is going to be overwhelming our hospital systems.’
Cuomo has already pleaded with the federal government to mobilize the army to fit out buildings in New York to turn them into temporary hospitals.
There are more than 950 cases in New York State, almost half of them are in New York City.
Cuomo revealed that there are only 50,000 hospital beds in the entire state and only 3,000 of them are in intensive care units.
‘The only hope we have at this late date is retrofit existing facilities.
‘Get some of the people from the hospitals into those new medical facilities and back fill the beds with coronavirus. States can’t build – it’s the army corp of engineers.
‘Let them come in today. Today. Time is short,’ he warned.
Other cities have implemented their own shutdowns but the federal government is yet to take a position on it.
Trump told Americans to ‘settle down’ on Sunday and warned them to stop stockpiling supplies, saying food stores would remain open no matter what happened.
New York City is all but shut down. Broadway has been closed since Friday, bars and restaurants will close on Tuesday morning
An almost deserted subway station in Brooklyn, New York, on Monday morning as millions of New Yorkers stayed home
However he is being widely criticized for his approach to the pandemic, which many say has been too slow from the beginning.
On Monday morning, the Dow opened down more than 2,200 points.
The S&P 500 futures index fell by eight percent at the opening bell, triggering a circuit breaker which halted trading for 15 minutes.
When the market reopened, it fell further and flirted towards a second circuit breaker, by dropping by as much as 11.5 percent.
It recovered and held throughout the rest of the morning.
Now, there are fears over how the country’s healthcare system is going to react to the surge in patients that will flood through hospitals in the next weeks and months.
Two emergency room doctors have become the latest are in the hospital in critical condition after contracting coronavirus.
New York State has the highest number of cases in the country with more than 950. Above, a drive-thru testing facility in New Rochelle
Dr James Pruden, of St Joseph’s Health Medical Center in Paterson, New Jersey, contracted coronavirus and is in isolation in intensive care
One is a 70-year-old who has respiratory problems but the other is in their 40s and had no underlying health concerns.
Dr. James Pruden from Paterson, New Jersey, is in isolation after contracting the virus.
He was hospitalized 10 days ago with respiratory problems and has since agreed to be named and pictured in the hope that it will urge others who came into contact with him to take the necessary precautions.
It is unclear whether Dr.Pruden contracted the virus by treating patients, or if he was exposed outside the hospital.
‘He recognizes by sharing his name and condition it may encourage others to come forward and get tested.
‘The point we want to make is we are all at risk of this,’ St. Joseph’s Health President Kevin Slavin said last week.
The other doctor has not been named.
He works at EvergreenHealth Medical Center in Kirkland, Washington, where there have been 40 deaths.
Dr Liam Yore, the immediate past president of the Washington Chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians, told The Seattle Times the doctor was in his 40s.
Yore told the newspaper the doctor had used personal protective equipment and that it was not known whether the physician contracted COVID-19 in the community or at work.
Trading is halted at the opening bell after the Dow plummets by 2,250 points – 9% – wiping out ALL of Friday’s gains – as Wall Street buckles under deepening coronavirus chaos despite frantic bailouts from the world’s banks
The S&P 500 fell by 10.71 percent, triggering the first stage of circuit breakers which halted trading
The Dow was down by 2,250 points on Monday – 9.71 percent – at the opening bell
Trading was immediately halted on Monday at the opening bell as the Dow plummeted by 2,250 points – nine percent – and the futures market tanked amid the deepening coronavirus crisis.
Trading began at 20,935 – a decrease of 9.71 percent – 2,250.46 points – since Friday’s historic day of recovery on the Dow.
The S&P 500 fell by more than eight percent which kicked into gear what is known as a circuit breaker – a mechanism which acts like a kill switch to stop trading before prices can fall by too much.
Trading resumed 15 minutes after the first breaker and fell further.
The Dow fell further and by 10am, was down by 11 percent, as was the S&P 500.
The S&P 500 needs to fall by another 13 percent before trading is halted until 3.25pm. Then, it will then have to plummet by 20 percent to be halted for the rest of the day.
It came after the Federal Reserve bank slashed interest rates to zero and announced a $700billion plan to buy government and treasury bonds in a desperate effort to keep the economy afloat, the most drastic step the Fed has taken since the GFC of 2008.
All of the gains from Friday – which was the best day in Wall Street history in terms o of recovery – were wiped out in one fell swoop.
Bars and restaurants in New York City prepared to close their doors and millions of children stayed at home under shut down orders from the state government.
In weekend trading, futures market hit limit downs which automatically halted trading before prices got too low.
In London, £9 billion was wiped off the FTSE 100 on Monday in its worst day of trading in nine years. The index of Britain’s leading companies dropped 427 points or 8.7 per cent to 4,921 in the first 40 minutes.
Last Monday, circuit breakers initiated a 15-minute halt on trades when prices plunged by seven percent in the first 10 minutes or so of trading at the New York Stock Exchange.
It happened again on Thursday, the day after Trump closed the border to Europe, a decision which sent the market into bear territory.
There was a spurt of hope on Friday, when a $1.5trillion bailout plan from the Fed revived the Dow and boosted it by 1,900 points in a single day – an increase of nine percent which gave the president reason to boast over the weekend.
But as the virus’ reach became more widespread over the weekend and decisions were made to contain it – like closing schools in New York, bars and restaurants and shutting off the border to the UK and Irerland, analysts were pessimistic.