Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times

The White House and Senate leaders of both parties struck an agreement late Tuesday on a sweeping $2 trillion measure to aid workers, businesses and a health care system strained by the rapidly spreading coronavirus outbreak.

The agreement came after days of often intense haggling and mounting pressure and still needed to be finalized in detailed legislative language.

Top White House aide Eric Ueland announced the agreement in a Capitol hallway shortly after midnight. Ladies and gentlemen, we are done. We have a deal,' Ueland said.

The unprecedented economic rescue package would give direct payments to most Americans, expand unemployment benefits and provide a $367 billion program for small businesses to keep making payroll while workers are forced to stay home.

The final details had proved nettlesome. One of the last issues to close concerned $500 billion for guaranteed, subsidized loans to larger industries, including a fight over how generous to be with the airlines. Hospitals would get significant help as well.

The package was aimed to combat what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had called "the most serous threat to Americans' health in over a century and quite likely the greatest risk to America's jobs and prosperity that we've seen since the Great Depression."

Yet even as the public-health crisis deepened, President Donald Trump expressed eagerness to nudge many people back to work in coming weeks and held out a prospect, based more on hope than science, that the country could be returning to normal in less than a month.

The passage of the bill buoyed financial markets in Asia and Europe, and the optimism looked likely to carry over to Wall Street, as trading in futures indicated a strong opening for stocks there.

The sheer size and scope of the stimulus package would have been unthinkable only a couple of weeks ago. Administration officials said they hoped that its effect on a battered economy would be exponentially greater than its $2 trillion cost, generating as much as $4 trillion in economic activity.

“This is not a moment of celebration, but one of necessity,” the minority leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer, said as he took careful note of the changes his party had secured in the legislation. “To all Americans I say, ‘Help is on the way.’”

The legislation, which is expected to be enacted within days, is the biggest economic stimulus package in modern American history, dwarfing the $800 billion stimulus bill passed in 2008 during the financial crisis. The aim is to deliver critical financial support to businesses forced to shut their doors and relief to American families and hospitals reeling from the rapid spread of the disease and the resulting economic disruption.

In his Tuesday afternoon briefing with the coronavirus task force, President Trump couched earlier comments about he wants the nation "opened up and just raring to go by Easter" -- a date just more than two weeks, away that few health experts believe will be sufficient in containing the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19).

The president said he still wants Americans working again by Easter Sunday, something he first said during a virtual town hall with Fox News earlier in the day, even as doctors warn the nation will see a massive spike in cases if Americans return to crowded workplaces or events.

His previous comments about reopening the economy prompted alarm among public health experts across the country, who said it's far too early. Trump seemed to much more carefully toe the line during his briefing as he talked about "carefully and responsibly reopening the country."

"I give it two weeks," Trump said earlier in the town hall, suggesting he was ready to phase out his 15-day self-isolating guidelines when they expire. "I guess by Monday or Tuesday, it's about two weeks. We will assess at that time and give it more time if we need a little more time. We have to open this country up."
But Trump said Monday that the health experts on his task force do not necessarily agree with his hope for a quick return to their jobs to boost the economy. Some Republicans on Capitol Hill, including Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa and Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, are also sounding the alarm.
"There will be no normally functioning economy if our hospitals are overwhelmed and thousands of Americans of all ages, including our doctors and nurses, lay dying because we have failed to do what's necessary to stop the virus," Cheney, the No. 3 House Republican, tweeted Tuesday.

Trump stressed that this is a "medical crisis — this isn't a financial crisis."

In the Fox News TV special earlier Tuesday, Trump said he "would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter."

That's April 12, within the timeline of "weeks" that Trump said he hopes is appropriate for curtailing the social distancing, isolation and other measures that officials have outlined to slow the spread of the coronavirus — but that have also paralyzed the economy.

During the briefing, officials also recommended that people who have recently left the New York City metro area should self-quarantine for the next 14 days to ensure the virus doesn't spread.

The rate of infections inside the U.S. has not stopped climbing — by Tuesday afternoon, there were more than 50,000 confirmed cases nationwide, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University — and Trump's April 12 target date is far sooner than other milestones set by officials across the country.

The District of Columbia has closed its schools through April 24, for example; schools in Virginia won't reconvene at all for the rest of this academic year.

Trump and Vice President Pence have talked up what they call the need for the U.S. to reset in stride, as military commanders might say — to continue some mitigation measures to constrain the pandemic but also permit some businesses to reopen.

"You can destroy a country this way by closing it down," Trump said in the Fox special on Tuesday.

The president and vice president framed one focus for the upcoming months on the most vulnerable populations, particularly older people with preexisting medical conditions.

Under this construction, life might shift away from keeping everyone apart to permitting more people to leave their homes and return to work. For the time being, Trump said Americans might still be discouraged from shaking hands and other such activity. "We can socially distance ourselves and go to work," he said.

Trump told reporters during the daily press briefing it was his idea -- and not that of his medical experts -- to suggest Easter, which falls on April 12, as a potential date by which the US would again be "raring to go."
"We'll only do it if it's good. We'll do large sections of the country," Trump said, adding he would listen closely to recommendations from Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, two top medical experts on the White House coronavirus taskforce.
Asked who suggested the Easter date, Trump said it was him.
"I thought it was a beautiful time. A beautiful timeline," he said.
Pressed whether it was based on data, he said: "It was based on a certain level of weeks from the time we started and it happened to arrive, we were thinking of terms of sooner. I'd love to see it come sooner."
Fauci told reporters that while he met with Trump in the Oval Office Tuesday he emphasized the need to be "flexible" in determining a date for a bounce back.
"We just had a conversation with the President in the Oval Office. You can look at a date but you gotta be very flexible," Fauci told reporters when asked what he thought of Trump's timeline.
Fauci also said that parts of the country may be OK by Easter but added other places that are worsening would likely not be.
"Obviously, no one is going to want to tone down things when you see things going on like in NYC," he said.

source: npr cnn

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Terrence McNally, the admired playwright and librettist who received five Tony Awards while bringing his perspective of the world to such productions as Kiss of the Spider-Woman, Master Class, Ragtime and Love! Valour! Compassion!, has died from complications due to coronavirus. He was 81.

McNally died Tuesday at Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Sarasota, Florida, according to representative Matt Polk. He battled lung cancer since the late 1990s, and the disease cost him portions of both lungs. He had lived with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease ever since.

Mr. McNally’s Tony Awards attest to his versatility. Two were for books for musicals, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” (1993) and “Ragtime” (1998), and two were for plays, and vastly different ones: “Love! Valor! Compassion!” (1995), about gay men who share a vacation house, and “Master Class” (1996), in which the opera diva Maria Callas reflects on her career.

And those prize winners were only a small part of his oeuvre. With 36 plays to his credit, as well as the books for 10 musicals, the librettos for four operas and a handful of screenplays for film and television, Mr. McNally was a remarkably prolific and consistent dramatist.

On Twitter, stars including Jason Alexander and Lin-Manuel Miranda paid tribute to McNally, who received a lifetime achievement Tony Award last year. 

"His work was vital, intense, hysterical and rare," wrote Alexander, who starred in the 1997 film adaptation of "Love! Valour! Compassion!" "My hope is that he will inspire writers for years to come."

"Heartbroken over the loss of Terrence McNally, a giant in our world, who straddled plays and musicals deftly," Miranda wrote. "Grateful for his staggering body of work and his unfailing kindness."

McNally was an openly gay writer who wrote about homophobia, love and AIDS. He is survived by his husband, theater producer Tom Kirdahy. 

McNally is one of the first noteworthy figures in entertainment to die from coronavirus (COVID-19), which has ravaged the world with more than 380,000 confirmed cases globally. In the past two weeks, celebrities including Idris Elba, Daniel Dae Kim, Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson, and Colton Underwood have all announced that they tested positive for the virus. 

Mr. McNally, who died of coronavirus complications, introduced audiences to characters and situations that most mainstream theater had previously shunted into comic asides.

Hanatavirus kill a man

A man who died in China Monday reportedly tested positive for a hantavirus,which is one of a family of viruses spread by rodents that can cause disease in humans. but that doesn't necessarily mean you should worry another pandemic is coming. The man from Yunnan Province in southwest China was traveling east by bus to Shadong Province, and the 32 other people on board are also being tested for hantavirus, according to the state-run Global Times newspaper as reported by Newsweek on Tuesday.

The tweet, sent amid a pandemic caused by a new coronavirus, has been shared more than 15,000 times.

Though countries across the globe are on high alert due to uncertainty around the coronavirus, there is no indication that the hantavirus poses a global public health threat.

According to the CDC, hantavirus cases are rare, and they spread as a result of close contact with rodent urine, droppings or saliva. 

“The #Hantavirus first emerged in 1950s in the American-Korean war in Korea (Hantan river). It spreads from rat/mice if humans ingest their body fluids. Human-human transmission is rare,” Swedish scientist Dr. Sumaiya Shaikh tweeted.

Certain kinds of rats and mice in the United States can carry the virus, which is transmitted when someone breathes in contaminated air.

Hantavirus in US

"The hantaviruses that cause human illness in the United States cannot be transmitted from one person to another," the CDC says on its website. Rare cases in Chile and Argentina have seen person-to-person transmission when a person is in close contact with someone sickened by a type of hantavirus called Andes virus, the CDC says.

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

The company says it will switch to a broader approach for its experimental drug, remdesivir. But it was overwhelmed by demand for a potential treatment promoted by President Trump.

Overwhelmed by demand for an experimental treatment for coronavirus, the drug maker Gilead abruptly shut down its emergency access program, leaving doctors and families scrambling for answers.

The company said it was setting up a broader access program that could try to help more people, but some said the transition is delaying remedies for very ill patients who have few options.

“We have heard zero. We know nothing,” said Genny Allard, the mother of Jack Allard, a 25-year-old New Jersey resident who is in a medically induced coma and on a ventilator at Hackensack Meridian Health JFK Medical Center in Edison, N.J. “I’m just, like, apoplectic at this point. I have a kid who is sick and the doctor wants to give him the next medicine that is supposed to help.”

The drug, remdesivir, is being studied in several large-scale clinical trials around the world, including a huge trial announced last week by the World Health Organization. But the results have not been reported yet, and it is still unclear whether the drug works against the coronavirus. It was studied to treat Ebola, but did not work well enough against that virus.

There is no known treatment against the coronavirus. Over the last week, President Trump has repeatedly referred to remdesivir and other drugs, like two long-used malaria drugs, as potential game-changers, despite pushback by top health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Dr. Fauci has corrected Mr. Trump in blunt ways during the daily White House briefings, saying that there is not enough scientific evidence to prove the drugs will work against the virus.

Critics of the president have complained that he is instilling false hope in a desperate public, as the disease spreads rapidly around the United States and elsewhere. Highly publicized talk of prospective cures has fueled demand for these potential treatments — threatening the longstanding supply of some of these drugs that are relied on regularly by people with lupus and other conditions.

As the virus spread to Europe and the United States, Gilead said emergency requests had “flooded an emergency treatment access system that was set up for very limited access to investigational medicines and never intended for use in response to a pandemic.”

Remdesivir has been given on a case-by-case basis to patients in China, Japan, Europe and the United States — where it was administered to the first coronavirus patient in the country, who was treated in Washington State in late January.

Six clinical trials of remdesivir are underway around the world, and early results from trials in China could be announced by the end of next month. “By the time we get to the end of April, we should have a preliminary idea of the safety and efficacy of this medicine against coronavirus,” said Daniel O’Day, Gilead’s chief executive, in a news conference earlier this month.

Gilead said it was switching to a broader program because it could not handle individual requests. “Due to overwhelming demand over the last several days, during this transition period we are unable to accept new individual compassionate use requests,” the company said on Sunday, with the exception of pregnant women and children under 18. “This approach will both accelerate access to remdesivir for severely ill patients and enable the collection of data from all participating patients,” the company said.

Gilead said it was processing “previously approved” requests but did not say what the status was of requests — like Mr. Allard’s — that had been submitted but not approved.

	Allard family photo

Drug makers have long run so-called “compassionate use” programs that allow patients to take unapproved, experimental drugs if they have no other options. The switch to what’s known as an “expanded access program” would allow the approvals to apply to larger groups instead of one individual at a time. These programs are often run as loose clinical trials, in which patients who did not qualify for the more stringent requirements of the trial can enroll. In addition to giving more patients access to the drug, it also allows the companies to collect data, including what dose was used, how sick the patient was and the extent that it worked. In compassionate-use programs, this type of information is usually not shared.

“You are trying to save somebody, rescue somebody. It’s a last-ditch throwing the kitchen sink at them, and you rarely get information back,” said Dr. Art Caplan, head of the division of medical ethics at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine. He said that he was giving unpaid advice to some companies pursuing treatments for coronavirus. The shift to a broader program will allow Gilead to learn about the drug. Without it, “you don’t learn what’s going on, so you’re sort of stuck.”

A Gilead spokeswoman said the company did not expect the transition to a new program would result in delays in treatment compared with how long patients were already waiting for the drug under the company’s now-ended compassionate-use program. Gilead would not provide details about the average turnaround time, but the spokeswoman said the company has been inundated with requests over the past week.

The company has said that it has a limited supply of remdesivir, but that it is increasing production. It is also drawing on a stockpile Gilead created for use in future pandemics after Ebola outbreaks in West Africa.

Mr. Allard, who lives in Metuchen, N.J. and works as an equity analyst for Bank of America in Manhattan, was admitted to the hospital on the night of March 16 after he had a high fever, back pain and was throwing up, his mother said. She described Mr. Allard, a former All-American lacrosse player at Bates College, as healthy and with no underlying conditions.

In New Jersey, officials announced 935 new positive cases on Monday, bringing the total to 2,844, including 27 deaths.

Mr. Allard was tested Tuesday for the coronavirus, but the sample was sent to Quest Diagnostics, and his mother said the hospital never received the results.

As the week went on, Mr. Allard’s condition rapidly declined, Ms. Allard said. He was placed in a medically induced coma and put on a ventilator. Ms. Allard said his doctors wanted to try remdesivir, but they needed to have a confirmed positive test showing he had the illness caused by the virus before they could seek the drug from Gilead. Finally, after the family made a flurry of calls to elected officials and others, the hospital tested him again on Saturday and received the results from another laboratory in less than six hours.

His results came back positive and that night — around 10:30 — the doctor submitted her request to Gilead. By the next morning, Ms. Allard said, she was hearing that Gilead was shifting to a new system, and news stories later on Sunday confirmed her fears.

His doctor has submitted another request under the new system, but Ms. Allard now fears his treatment will be delayed. Ms. Allard said the doctor had previously treated another patient with remdesivir and the turnaround time for approval had been 48 hours.

“I feel as if we are in regulatory limbo,” Ms. Allard said. “We were good, we were following the rules, he was queued up for what the rules were as of Saturday night and we woke up Sunday and everything changed.”

Via NEWYORKTIMES

Apple is currently giving out freebies to Books users in the US. The next time you launch the app, you'll see a notification inviting you to "explore free books, read-alongs for kids, cozy mysteries, and audiobooks for the whole family." Tapping on the message will lead you to a featured collection where you can select one book or audiobook from a variety of genres. You can also pick a novel from the company's "First in a Series, Free" section.


The timing of the promotion suggests Apple is trying to help out people who are stuck inside during the coronavirus pandemic. This appears to be a limited-time offer, so if you're interested, take advantage as soon as you can.

Once you've finished reading your freebie from Apple Books, you can turn to an app like Libby to get more reading material. Libby allows you to borrow e-books and audiobooks from your local library. All you need is a library card, which, in most instances, you can get for free.

This transmission electron microscope image shows the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The virus was isolated from a patient in the U.S., emerging from the surface of cells cultured in the lab. (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases – Rocky Mountain Laboratories)

themonitor

RIO GRANDE CITY — Starting Sunday, Starr County will have a drive-thru for COVID-19 testing.

On Saturday afternoon, Starr County Judge Eloy Vela, local health authority Dr. Jose Vasquez, President of Starr County Industrial Foundation Rose Benavidez, SCIF Chairman Sam Vale and other officials met outside South Texas College’s Starr County campus’ North end parking lot where the first drive-thru will be held.

Benavidez explained how they were able to secure the site with STC, while Vale is credited for getting the facility going as he is also sponsoring the first month of the testing center.

“It really took a village,” Vela said. “I’m very proud of Starr County that everyone came together.”

While the testing center is located in Starr County, anyone can be tested at the center as long as they meet the requirements.


“We first want to take care of our own,” Vasquez said. “But in a crisis, like the one that we have in our hands, we cannot deny services to anybody.”

Vasquez laid out the process of how individuals can qualify to be tested at the drive-thru.

First, individuals must call the COVID-19 hotlines, provided by their officials, to indicate if they are potentially a positive case for the coronavirus.

If so, individuals then must be screened by their doctors. If their doctor determines that they might be a case for COVID-19, then the doctor will provide a prescription.

Vasquez added that individuals who do not have insurance can visit clinics.

Once individuals have a prescription, then they qualify to be tested at the drive-thru so long as they provide the prescription, a form of identification and insurance proof, if any.

Any individual without insurance will still be tested at the drive-thru at no cost; individuals with insurance will be covered.

However, individuals that qualify to go to the drive-thru must arrive with their windows up. They will be met with security; they must not roll down the window or leave their vehicle under any circumstances.

Instead, they will show their prescription through the window, be guided by the personnel to the tent, and be met by lab technicians in their safety gear and equipment.

While the test itself wasn’t described, Vasquez mentioned that it will be conducted while the individual is inside their vehicle.

Results take around 24 hours.

Vasquez declared they aren’t worried of not having enough testing for individuals as the testing center will have 600 tests.

The drive-thru testing center’s official hours are noon to 6 p.m., but if the demand increases, then officials will increase the hours.

“I need the community to know that in the days to come cases, positive cases, are going to start showing up in our statistics. I need people to not fall in panic, “Vasquez urged. “It doesn’t mean that there are no cases in our community. It’s just that we haven’t been able to test enough to be able to identify those cases.

Cases are going to come back positive. We need to use that as a positive tool to try to prevent for the spread of the disease, so please do not panic when the results start coming out in the future.”

This post has been updated to reflect accuracy in testing sites in South Texas.

via themonitor

TheVerge

Amazon is positioning itself as an ‘essential’ service during the pandemic — a move that benefits the company and puts its warehouse workers and drivers in danger

Last night, speaking from the state’s emergency operations center in Sacramento, California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered everyone in the state to stay home to slow the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Malls, retail stores, and other businesses not considered critical infrastructure were to close in the most sweeping lockdown so far in the US.

That same night, also in Sacramento, an Amazon worker received an automated call telling him that his job at a distribution center was essential, and he should continue to come to work. In Washington, an early epicenter of the US outbreak, managers at an Amazon warehouse told employees that they would continue doing their jobs despite the state-mandated closure of nonessential businesses and the fact that workers in Amazon’s nearby corporate offices have been working remotely since March 5th.

As the virus spreads and cities lock down, Amazon workers across the country are finding themselves thrust into a new role: delivering goods to a nation in quarantine. But many fear that the safety precautions, benefits, and protections have not changed sufficiently to reflect the new reality, and that if their warehouses continue operating as everything else shuts down, many will fall ill.

CROWDED WORKPLACES, NONEXISTENT SCREENINGS FOR SYMPTOMS, A LACK OF CLEANING SUPPLIES, AND A PACE OF WORK THAT MADE PROPER SANITATION DIFFICULT

“We’re all going to get sick eventually,” said a worker at a facility in Washington. “The vibe with coworkers is that we are all probably going to get it. It’s just a matter of time.”

Amazon is uniquely positioned to thrive in the crisis. It’s spent more than two decades building a robust logistics network capable of delivering almost anything to anyone, and now Americans stuck at home are turning to the company to supply basic necessities. Data supplied by JungleScout shows search volume surging first for face masks and hand sanitizer, then for rice, soup, webcams, monitors — anything Americans might need as they hunker down. Already infrastructure for a huge portion of e-commerce, Amazon is becoming infrastructure for a house-bound populace.

But the virus also poses an unprecedented threat to Amazon’s logistics system and, more importantly, the workers who make it run. The company’s fulfillment centers depend on staffs of a thousand or more working in close proximity. The Verge spoke with 24 warehouse workers and delivery drivers, many of whom spoke of crowded workplaces, nonexistent screenings for symptoms, a lack of cleaning supplies, and a pace of work that made proper sanitation difficult. Across the country, workers are weighing the need for an income against the fear that they might become infected and endanger their loved ones.

These concerns will only become more acute as the pandemic worsens. On March 18th, The Atlantic reported that a worker at an Amazon distribution center in New York tested positive for the virus. Workers on the following shift said they weren’t notified and were expected to come in but refused when learning of the case from co-workers, shutting down the facility. (Amazon said it notified workers and that they weren’t expected to work the following shift, and that it has temporarily closed the facility for cleaning.) In Italy and Spain, Amazon has refused to shut down facilities where workers have been infected, prompting protests.

“I think what will wind up happening is the warehouse is going to stay open pretty much no matter what,” said Tyler Hamilton, a worker at a fulfillment center in Minnesota, where the governor has ordered schools and many businesses closed. “I understand why, because everything else is closed, and to make sure for society that people get basic necessities, food, toiletries — that’s important. But if you’re going to have that happening you should be taking proper precautions for your workers so they’re not suffering at the expense for everyone else.”

“IF SOMEONE HAS A VIRUS, ALL OF US HAVE IT.”

In response to the pandemic, Amazon has altered policies and instituted new procedures. Last week, Amazon announced that employees who test positive for COVID-19 will get two weeks paid leave, though testing is still largely unavailable, and workers who take time off when symptoms appear risk going without pay if it turns out they were ill with something else. Amazon also announced that workers can take unlimited time off without pay. (Previously, they would have been fired for overdrawing their quota of unpaid time off.) While some workers have taken unpaid leave because they fear infection or need to care for children who have been sent home from school, many more say they cannot afford to go without a paycheck.

Reached for comment about Amazon’s status as an essential service and safety concerns among workers, an Amazon spokesperson said that the company had instituted new cleaning procedures, taken measures to encourage social distancing in its warehouses, and made other changes. “The health and safety of our employees and contractors around the world continues to be our top priority,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “As communities around the world are requiring social distancing, we’re seeing that our teams—much like grocery stores, pharmacies and other essential services—have a unique role getting customers the critical items they need and this is especially vital for the elderly, people with underlying health issues, and those sick or quarantined.”

But while workers say they have been told to wipe down their stations and wash their hands with sanitizer, they’re still expected to maintain the same intense pace, which leaves little time to do so. “The longer you take to do it, the faster you’re going to have to work later on,” Hamilton said. “They should allow associates to go to the bathroom, to wash their hands regularly, as opposed to counting it against them.”

Warehouse workers in Washington, California, and Minnesota say they are not being screened for symptoms when arriving at work and that their jobs often require them to stand far closer than the six-foot distance recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “If you try to stretch your hand, it would reach next person,” said Hibaq Mohamed, who works on the packaging line in a Minnesota fulfillment center. Workers pass items to each other and often share equipment. “If someone has a virus, all of us have it,” she said.

William Stolz, another worker at the facility, worries that operating without testing every worker and implementing other safety measures will cause the warehouse to become a major vector for transmission. “I really think that with this pandemic, if Amazon is staying open with the risk of the transmission being what it is, if this pandemic gets worse, they’re going to be part of the reason why.”

A DELIVERY DRIVER IN INDIANAPOLIS SAID HE WAS GIVEN SANITIZING WIPES ON MONDAY BUT NONE AFTER THAT

Last week, Amazon workers in New York began circulating a petition calling for paid sick leave regardless of diagnosis, hazard pay, the shutdown of facilities if workers test positive for the virus, and an end to penalties for not meeting the rate. “As the coronavirus pandemic unfolds and communities everywhere prepare for the worst, Amazon workers have become crucial in getting people their food, water, and sanitation supplies,” the group wrote.

Safety measures have also been uneven for delivery drivers, according to interviews with a dozen drivers, most of whom work for third-party companies that have contracts with Amazon. A delivery driver in Indianapolis said he was given sanitizing wipes on Monday but none after that. A driver in Virginia said some vans have hand sanitizer and wipes but others don’t and that every morning, he gathers with 20 to 30 other drivers to collect their keys. A driver in Georgia said she’d been told to sanitize her van and wash her hands but was given no supplies to do so. “Our packages go through so many hands before we even get them,” she said, noting that research found the virus can live on plastic for three days and cardboard for 24 hours. She’s scared, but she can’t afford not to work.

Nevertheless, some workers are choosing to take the financial hit and stay home. For some, they need to care for children who are no longer at school. Others fear becoming infected and passing the virus to others. “There’s more attrition day-to-day, so you don’t have the same amount of staffing,” said a worker at the Minnesota facility.

The reduced staffing comes at a time of unprecedented demand. Amazon typically hires thousands of temporary workers to handle the surges of Prime Day and holiday shopping, but it lets them go in January. “It’s like Prime Day every day — Prime Week,” said one warehouse worker, but without the staff to keep up. On Amazon, a growing number of items are showing up as out of stock, and deliveries that normally take a day or two now stretch to a week or more.

The bottleneck is being felt farther down the delivery chain. Drivers in Florida, Georgia, Virginia, and elsewhere said their routes have been shorter than usual all week. When a driver for Amazon Flex, the company’s on-demand delivery program, pulled up to their warehouse this weekend, the worker directing traffic said several workers had called out and deliveries were backed up, while another worker announced that they were starting hiring that day.

On Tuesday, Amazon announced that it was hiring 100,000 new workers and raising wages by $2 per hour, but it’s unclear whether that will be enough to entice people to venture into a crowded warehouse during a pandemic. “All warehouses right now are going to have a very difficult time maintaining manpower,” says Marc Wulfraat of the logistics consulting company MWPVL International. E-commerce companies like Amazon are particularly labor-intensive, he says, because they ship out individual products rather than bulk pallets. “Those buildings that Amazon has are extremely populated, they have the biggest parking lots of any distribution centers that are being made. They’re like little cities of two thousand, three thousand people working under one roof. The only thing I can predict is that even with the extra money that they’re offering, they are going to be hit hard with throughput shortages.”

“JUST LIKE AT A HOSPITAL, THAT IS ALSO MISSION CRITICAL.”

Workers worry that if Amazon’s recruitment drive succeeds, their warehouses will become even more crowded at a time when other businesses are being ordered to shift to telework, reduce staff, or close entirely. Local governments vary on what businesses are considered essential and can maintain operations, but so far most orders exempt warehouses, food, and other categories Amazon could reasonably fall under. On Tuesday, Amazon announced that it was temporarily halting deliveries of nonessential items to its warehouses, an effort to meet surging demand for medical supplies and household staples, but also a move that would bolster its case that it needs to keep running.

Many workers agree that the pandemic has transformed their jobs into something more essential, though several noted that they’re still shipping plenty of phone cases, house decorations, and other low-priority goods. (“We physically cannot keep up with the amount of orders,” one worker pleaded. “If you want to buy non-essentials, put it in your shopping cart, get it later, because it’s coming at the cost of sanitation supplies and food. It’s people staying fed and people staying healthy.”) But the virus has also transformed their jobs into something more dangerous, and if operations are going to continue as everything else shuts down, workers feel more substantive safety measures need to be taken.

“You would have something like Amazon that does stay open and provide that basic service, but the workers would have the full precautions and protection to deal with it, because you are working in a pandemic in an area full of people,” said Hamilton, the Minnesota warehouse worker. “Just like at a hospital, that is also mission critical. “You need the hospital during a pandemic, you need that service to make sure you get through it. But people in a hospital get protection, at least as much as we can,” he said, acknowledging that even medical workers currently lack necessary protective gear. “If we were to actually prepare better as a society, or in Amazon’s case as a company, it would look something like that.”

Update March 21, 11AM ET: The story has been updated to include a statement from Amazon.