Live updates: Trump admits reopening states may cost lives, as U.S. death toll surpasses 70,000

Vice President Pence said Wednesday that White House officials had asked college athletic representatives to consider curtailing the attendance of elderly alumni at sporting events as a strategy to reduce the spread of the coronavirus among the higher-risk group.

Pence, who leads the White House coronavirus task force, shared that the conversation had taken place in a syndicated radio interview during which host Hugh Hewitt pressed him on whether age-based restrictions might be part of a strategy for reopening the country. (Hewitt is also an opinion columnist for The Washington Post.)

Hewitt asked Pence if he could anticipate guidance from the government, for example, that airline flights be restricted to those age 45 and under “so that people might feel better about traveling with groups that are naturally more resilient in the face of this virus.”

“I think that’s a very interesting question,” Pence said. “And you know, when we had conversations with the commissioners of the major university and college athletic associations not long ago, we talked about that they might consider asking some of the elderly alumni to consider taking a pass on some sporting events should they restart in the summer or in the fall.”

Pence added that such decisions should ultimately be left to state governors and businesses.

Hewitt also suggested that age-based restrictions could be imposed on summer pool openings, an idea that Pence did not address directly. He instead pivoted to talking about the importance of “being able to enjoy the outdoors in the sunlight” and expressed hope that “we could be in a very different place by shortly after Memorial Day or early June.”

After New Zealand entered a strict lockdown at the end of March, a group of thieves sensed an opportunity in what Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern framed as a moment of national solidarity.

New Zealand is a major backpacker and tourist destination, with numerous rental car companies competing for customers in normal times. But with tourism and travel banned under its strictest lockdown rules, the Jucy rental car company abandoned its Auckland storage site near the main airport.

Over the course of several days last month, about 100 of the cars and vans parked on the site were stolen, adding to the company’s concerns over its economic survival amid the pandemic.

“We couldn’t believe that when everyone was pitching in and looking after each other as a nation, there would be this brazen theft,” Tom Ruddenklau, the company’s chief rental officer, told the BBC.

The thieves’ fortunes quickly turned, however. With New Zealand’s streets virtually empty during the coronavirus lockdown, some of the thieves behind the wheels were quickly spotted by officers on patrol. Surveillance camera footage provided further details, and New Zealanders joined the effort amid an outcry over the mass theft, alerting authorities to potential sightings.

BERLIN — Poland is mired in political chaos just days before a scheduled presidential election, with the ruling party determined to forge ahead with the vote despite the coronavirus pandemic.

The Law and Justice party is pushing to hold the election — slated for Sunday — using a vote-by-mail system.

However, opposition parties and rights groups have raised concerns about using the untested system and are lobbying for a delay of several months.

Any delay could hurt the chances of President Andrzej Duda, the incumbent Law and Justice candidate who currently leading in the polls, given the expected economic impact of the coronavirus in the coming months.

The government hopes to limit delays to a few weeks, arguing that anything more would be unconstitutional. But parliament is expected to vote on the issue this week, and it remains unclear whether the ruling coalition can win amid indications that members of one of its coalition partners will vote for a delay.

Opposition parties argue that their candidates have not had a fair opportunity to campaign due to the pandemic, while Duda enjoys extensive television coverage.

European Union officials have urged Poland to ensure free and fair elections, with long-standing concerns over the rule of law in the country.

A report published Wednesday by Washington-based Freedom House said that “among the region’s waning democracies, Poland continues to stand out for the systematic, targeted, and aggressive nature of the government’s attacks on judicial independence.”

If Poland continues on its current course, “it will join hybrid regimes and autocracies that routinely mete out politicized justice,” it said.

Vice President Pence plans to visit Iowa on Friday to discuss reopening religious services to the public and maintaining the nation’s food supply, the latest in a series of trips that he and President Trump are making to highlight the administration’s response to the coronavirus.

Pence’s planned travel comes in the wake of Trump’s visit Tuesday to a face-mask manufacturing facility in Arizona, a trip he used to tout his desire to see an easing of stay-at-home restrictions that have undercut the economy.

According to his office, Pence is scheduled to meet with faith leaders in Des Moines to discuss safely lifting restrictions on services at “houses of worship.”

During an appearance on the syndicated Hugh Hewitt radio show on Wednesday, Pence said churches and synagogues could spread out seating and add services to provide additional social distancing.

While in Iowa, Pence also plans to visit the headquarters of Hy-Vee, a company that announced this week that it would impose limits on meat sales at its stores due to worker shortages at meatpacking plants.

Last week, Trump signed an executive order compelling meat processors to remain open to address anticipated shortages in the nation’s food supply chains, despite mounting reports of plant worker deaths due to covid-19. Separately, Trump is planning to meet at the White House on Wednesday afternoon with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R). She will be the latest in a string of governors from both parties who have traveled to Washington to offer an in-person briefing to Trump on state response efforts.

TOKYO — South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers Wednesday it does not believe North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had heart surgery last month, and determined that his three-week absence from public view was probably linked to fears over the coronavirus pandemic.

Officials of the National Intelligence Service told a parliamentary committee that the reports of heart surgery, first carried by South Korean website Daily NK and then amplified by Western media into talk that Kim was gravely ill or dead, were “groundless,” according to Kim Byung-kee, a ruling-party lawmaker on the intelligence committee. “He was normally performing his duties when he was out of the public eye,” he said.

Instead, it appeared that concerns about the pandemic had limited the nuclear-armed dictator’s public activity, the lawmaker said.

On Sunday, President Trump said the United States had “foolishly” been funding the World Health Organization, which “missed every single call.” Two weeks ago, Trump announced his administration would temporarily halt U.S. funding for the WHO, pending a review of its actions related to the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Analysts have scrutinized the WHO’s delayed response to past public health emergencies. But our research indicates that the WHO contributes substantially to global health more broadly and serves as a significant partner in U.S. health efforts, particularly in Africa. Defunding this organization would probably erode sizable, long-standing U.S. investments on health in the region.

The northeastern Brazilian city of São Luís became the country’s first to go under lockdown on Tuesday, as officials instructed 1.5 million residents to stay home to salvage its overwhelmed health system.

As Brazil grapples with the worst coronavirus outbreak in Latin America, the city’s court-ordered restrictions go far beyond any measures in the rest of the country — and may influence others to follow suit.

Even as the pandemic’s daily death toll keeps rising, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has been flippant, if not entirely defiant, in his response. He has insisted that only the elderly and vulnerable should stay home and criticized governors who impose strict measures.

But for 10 days, São Luís, the capital of poor, tropical Maranhão state, will turn into a ghost town anyway.

Schools, public transit, parks and most businesses have been shuttered, while most residents are allowed to go outside only to shop at supermarkets or pharmacies, according to the Associated Press.

Although Maranhão has more than tripled its number of intensive care beds, mounting cases have left the city’s health system nearing capacity. Worried private hospitals sought a stronger response in court, and last week, a judge ordered the city to implement its mandate, including possible fines of up to $360.

The judge, Douglas Martins, said Brazil’s governors had not established sufficient penalties for preexisting orders, likely because of worries about getting reelected.

“With this ruling,” he told the AP, “perhaps we will have given the freedom that governors need nationally.”

It may already be working. On Tuesday, the neighboring state of Pará said it would lock down its most-infected municipalities this week, while Rio de Janeiro’s governor is reportedly considering similarly restrictive measures.

“We have a national challenge, but the federal government keeps sabotaging efforts to confront it,” Flávio Dino, the governor of Maranhão, told the AP. Bolsonaro “makes our work harder,” he added.

BRUSSELS — The European Union warned Tuesday of a massive hit to Europe’s economy from the coronavirus lockdowns, saying that the contraction this year could be the worst in Europe’s post-World War II history.

E.U. policymakers offered a grim forecast, predicting that even if the handling of the crisis goes smoothly and societies do not need to shutter again now that many have started easing restrictions, the economy of the European Union is expected to shrink by 7.4 percent in 2020. By comparison, in 2009, which was the worst year of the global financial crisis, Europe’s economy declined by just 4.4 percent.

“The E.U. has now entered the deepest economic recession in its history,” said Paolo Gentiloni, the top E.U. economic official, outlining a grim picture of rising unemployment and dashed opportunities.

The forecast also projected that the shock would be relatively brief, with a recovery in 2021 of 6.1 percent. But it said that if infections rise again, another three percentage points could be shaved off the economy this year, worsening the crisis even more. If E.U. countries fail to coordinate their economic response, Gentiloni said, the crisis could also be worsened.

Spain, Greece, Italy and Croatia are expected to be the worst-hit by the crisis, with their tourism-dependent economies shrinking by more than 9 percent. Poland would be the least affected, with a drop of 4.3 percent.

But despite taking a worse hit than the one expected in the United States, the unemployment figures are expected to look far more protected, Gentiloni said. E.U. unemployment is expected to rise from 6.7 percent in 2019 to 9.0 percent this year. Although that is a major blow, it is far less bad than in the United States, where analysts estimate that the unemployment rate has already more than doubled to more than 10 percent. The difference in Europe is that most governments have chosen to subsidize private salaries to avoid layoffs.

LONDON — Former British prime minister Theresa May criticized the global response to the deadly coronavirus pandemic on Wednesday, saying that world leaders failed to join forces and work together effectively in tackling the disease.

Writing for the Times newspaper in a piece titled “Nationalism is no ally in the battle without borders,” May said that as the disease took hold and spread among countries, leaders treated the crisis as a “national issue” and took an isolated approach to handling it, one she noted could have damaging consequences.

“While researchers and scientists may work together,” there was “little evidence of politicians doing so,” said May, who spent her tenure as prime minister attempting to negotiate a deal to pull Britain out of the European Union. She warned that “a polarised politics has taken hold.”

Her piece was published the day after Britain overtook Italy to become the worst-hit country in Europe, with 29,501 deaths.

“Strong international relations are vital to our security and success,” May wrote. She called on countries to work collaboratively to “engage with China” on how it can improve its human rights, carbon emissions and regional security.

In recent weeks, British officials and President Trump have made clear that China has questions to answer regarding its handling of the outbreak that originated in the city of Wuhan.

In her article, May said China owes the world an explanation and noted that both U.S. presidential candidates are “right to ask questions,” although she warned that “it would be a mistake to allow this to become a fault line in international relations.”

“A world in which a few ‘strong men’ square up to each other and expect everyone else to choose between them would be a dangerous one,” she said.

A University of Pittsburgh researcher on the cusp of making “very significant findings” about the novel coronavirus was killed over the weekend in what authorities say was a murder-suicide.

Bing Liu, 37, was shot multiple times around noon Saturday in Ross Township, Pa., a northern suburb of Pittsburgh, local police told WTAE.

As a research assistant professor, Liu focused on using computational models to study biological processes. He had been working from home during the pandemic and studying the virus, his boss said, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Officials told the paper that Liu was shot by another man and suffered gunshot wounds to the head, neck, torso and extremities. The man, later identified as 46-year-old Hao Gu, then got into his car about 100 yards away and killed himself.

It is unclear whether or how the two men knew each other, and police are investigating whether there was any confrontation before the incident.

In a statement, Liu’s department at Pitt’s School of Medicine called him a prolific researcher and generous mentor. Shortly before his death, he had begun researching the cellular mechanisms that underlie coronavirus infections and the cellular basis of ensuing complications.

Ivet Bahar, his supervisor and the head of his department, told the Post-Gazette that Liu had just started to receive interesting results.

“We will make an effort to complete what he started in an effort to pay homage to his scientific excellence,” the statement said.

DUBAI — Authorities in Dubai announced intensive measures to test for the coronavirus and prevent its spread in the United Arab Emirates’ dense labor camps, following reports of high instances of covid-19 infections among recently repatriated workers from South Asia.

Pakistan said Monday that on an April 28 flight of 209 passengers, 105 tested positive for the virus. A few days earlier, authorities said that out of three flights carrying 483 passengers from Dubai, Sharjah and Colombo, 190 tested positive. Pakistani officials say they have brought the matter up with Emirati authorities.

Some 60,000 Pakistani laborers, many of whom have lost their jobs, have registered to leave the UAE.

The concerns about the rate of infection among laborers emerged amid an effort by the UAE to get India and Pakistan to open their airways to repatriation flights. Some 200,000 Indian nationals have registered to return; the first flights to India are set for Thursday. Indian naval vessels are also headed to Dubai to help.

The Indian Embassy in the UAE said all those allowed on the flights will be tested for the virus and will undergo two weeks of quarantine once back in India.

The plight of the vast numbers of migrant laborers, mostly from South Asia, has been a concern since many have lost their jobs even as they live in crowded accommodations conducive to the spread of the virus.

In Saudi Arabia and Qatar, many infection clusters are centered on these workers.

In Dubai, crowded neighborhoods associated with migrant laborers were sealed off early in the outbreak, and the inhabitants were tested heavily.

According to the Dubai government, new measures announced Tuesday were being taken in the labor camps “to safeguard the health and well-being of blue collar workers” in those areas. These included extensive coronavirus testing and cleaning of facilities.

The UAE has reported 15,192 cases of the virus, with about 500 new cases reported every day for the last few weeks. There have been 146 fatalities.

As a coronavirus outbreak ravaged New York in March, a retired Kansas farmer dug out an N95 mask that he had once used while cleaning his grain bin and mailed it to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

“I am a retired farmer hunkered down here in N.E. Kansas with my wife who has but one lung and occasional problems with her remaining lung,” Dennis Ruhnke wrote. “She also has diabetes. We are in our 70s now and frankly I am afraid for her.”

Still, Ruhnke went on to say, he hoped his extra mask could be used by a nurse or doctor in New York City. He didn’t expect that Cuomo would actually read his handwritten note, he wrote, since the governor was “busy beyond belief.”

To his surprise, though, Cuomo read the letter out loud during a news conference in April, tearing up as he called Ruhnke an example of “humanity at its best.” The retired farmer, who told the Lawrence World-Journal that he couldn’t wait for his 15 minutes of fame to be over, briefly became famous for his act of solidarity.

Although Ruhnke, 73, never expected to get anything in return for his donation, he ended up fulfilling a long-deferred dream on Tuesday when he was awarded an honorary bachelor’s degree by Kansas State University.

In 1971, Ruhnke was just two credits shy of graduating from KSU with a degree in agriculture when his father died, the Manhattan Mercury reported. He ended up leaving school to take care of his mother and assume responsibility for the family farm. After his two sons graduated from Kansas State, he thought about going back to earn his last two credits, but learned that he would have to start over from scratch.

On Tuesday, Ruhnke finally received his diploma from Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly in a special ceremony at the Kansas statehouse. “Dennis’ kindness and lifelong career in agriculture make him more than qualified to receive a degree,” Kelly wrote.

Residents in China made 115 million trips over the May Day holiday weekend, a promising sign of recovery for the nation’s tourism sector as it trudges out of the coronavirus pandemic.

After shutdowns of up to three months paralyzed the industry, Chinese officials have attempted to encourage residents to travel domestically to revive the economy. According to data reported on Wednesday by travel agencies and the tourism industry, that effort is off to strong start.

Chinese travel operators earned $6.74 billion over the five-day holiday, according to Reuters, and the number of trips surpassed expected totals by nearly 28 percent.

“We can see that everyone’s confidence is gradually recovering,” Liang Jianzhang, head of a Chinese online travel agency, Trip.com, told state broadcaster CCTV.

While trips were still down compared with last year, the site’s data showed that many Chinese, particularly younger people, traveled to destinations such as the cities of Chengdu and Shanghai, as well as to a scenic national park in Sichuan province.

Transportation by car seemed to be especially popular, offering a clues on how the pandemic may affect travel worldwide in the long term. Even as overall tourism dropped 41 percent compared to last year, car rentals at Trip.com were up by 10 percent, and government officials said nearly two-thirds of all trips for May Day were taken by car.

In another sign of the country’s recovery, tens of thousands of students returned to school on Wednesday in Wuhan, where months of strict lockdown began lifting last month.

More than 120 schools in the city of 11 million — where the coronavirus emerged late last year — reopened for high school seniors, CNN reported, as they prepare for China’s university exam. Younger grades will be phased in over the coming weeks.

Bookshelves are having a moment.

Not long ago, their epitaph was being written. Ikea’s redesign of its Billy unit to accommodate objects other than books was cited as evidence that we had turned the page on possessing print.

Now, that story has a sequel.

Self-isolation has people rediscovering the value of having hardcovers at home. In addition, television networks’ shift to interviews via Skype, rather than in a studio, is revealing the bookcase backdrops of pundits, news anchors and celebrities at home.

People with disabilities are among the hardest hit by the coronavirus and need to be at the center of recovery efforts, the head of the United Nations said Wednesday.

Around the world, roughly 1 billion people with disabilities are already at an economic disadvantage and often lack access to adequate health care, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said. The coronavirus outbreak is “intensifying these inequalities, and producing new threats,” he said in a video message released alongside a policy brief that calls on governments to provide more support.

Guterres noted that lack of accessible public health information and barriers to basic hygiene measures make people with disabilities especially vulnerable to the coronavirus, and that the virus tends to be deadlier for people with preexisting health conditions. People with disabilities are also more likely to live in nursing homes and long-term-care facilities, where some of the worst outbreaks have occurred.

In addition, some countries ration health care “based on discriminatory criteria, such as age or assumptions about quality or value of life, based on disability,” Guterres said. “We cannot let this continue.”

The U.N.’s report calls for governments to reduce the number of people in institutions that could potentially become coronavirus hot spots, and consider expanding disability benefits to more people or increasing payments. People with disabilities should be prioritized in any recovery plan, since they are disproportionately likely to live in poverty, the brief says.

On Tuesday morning in Columbia Heights, a small crowd gathered — within the guidelines for mass gatherings in the District — for an event that by any measure has to be considered an act of extreme optimism: a groundbreaking.

Undaunted by the possibility that the building won’t be usable even after renovations are complete in August, the Studio Acting Conservatory forged ahead with a variation of the traditional shovel-in-the-ground ceremony. A bottle of champagne was broken over the front steps — a bubbly endorsement of an uncertain future. But it’s one that Joy Zinoman, the 44-year-old conservatory’s founding director, continues to believe in. The fact is, she has to.

“It’s about resilience,” says Studio Theatre’s founding artistic director. “That’s what this is about.”

Scientists who were modeling the spread of coronavirus in Arizona were told to stop work on Monday, hours after Gov. Doug Ducey (R) announced that restaurants and hair salons would be allowed to reopen in a matter of days.

An email obtained by the Arizona Republic and ABC 15 shows that the Arizona Department of Health Services abruptly asked a team of roughly two dozen experts from Arizona State University and the University of Arizona to “pause” their work on coronavirus projections. Those volunteer researchers had been compiling “the most robust public model in Arizona of covid-19,” according to the Republic, and found that cases were likely to dramatically increase unless social distancing requirements remained in place until the end of May.

The scientists were also informed that they would be losing access to all the special data sets that they were using. No explanation was given for the abrupt change.

Cara Christ, the state’s health director, told the Republic that the team hadn’t been disbanded, and could be brought back in the fall “to look at modeling during flu season.” In the meantime, the state plans to rely on a model from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that hasn’t been released to the public.

The decision was assailed by the nonprofit Arizona Public Health Association, which said that the team had been composed of top talent in the field. In a Tuesday blog post, executive director Will Humble questioned whether the researchers were told to stop their work because it was “producing results that were inconsistent with other messaging and decisions being made by the executive branch.”

Tyson Foods will reopen the country’s largest pork processing facility on Wednesday, after an outbreak of the novel coronavirus prompted a two week closure.

The Waterloo, Iowa plant, which processes 19,500 hogs a day and represents about 4 percent of the country’s pork processing capacity, had been under heavy pressure to close its doors amid a rise in infections.

More than 180 cases of the virus were linked to the plant’s employees, and production lines began to slow down in April as many other workers called in sick last month.

As The Washington Post reported, the company had failed to provide masks to workers at its Waterloo pork facility in March and early April, even as the coronavirus was rapidly spreading. Some workers told The Post they were given confusing instructions about when to return to work or told to come in while sick.

But on April 22, Tyson announced it would shutter the facility, though its chairman of the company’s executive board, John H. Tyson, also warned that the “food supply chain is breaking” and the nation’s supply of meat could be at risk.

But a week after President Trump signed an executive order compelling meat processors to remain open, the company has slowly started to reopen its facilities. On Monday, it reopened its pork plant in Perry, Iowa, where more than 700 of the facility’s workers had tested positive for the virus.

Tyson said employees will be screened on a daily basis, and the Waterloo facility will also maintain an on-site medical clinic.

All employees returning to work have tested negative for the coronavirus, while all those who tested positive will remain home on sick leave until they have been cleared by health officials.

“Our top priority is the health and safety of our team members, their loved ones and our communities,” Tom Hart, the facility’s manager, said in a statement late on Tuesday.

In March, Stephanie Jones, a single mom in West Chester, Pa., with an 11-year-old son, had several conversations with her employer about child-care concerns while schools were closed because of the novel coronavirus pandemic. According to a lawsuit filed April 16, she asked higher-ups at Eastern Airlines, where she worked as director of revenue management, if she could have two hours a day of flex time to focus on her son amid the long hours and weekends she was working.

Jones alleged that after a human resources official said her options were to take leave or resign, she asked about taking leave under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act. The official responded with an email that said he was “also well aware of the various new laws that you’ve had time to look up while at home” and that the law was “there as a safety net,” the lawsuit alleges.

As of Tuesday, roughly 1 out of every 5 Wendy’s restaurants had taken hamburgers off the menu, according to an analysis from the financial firm Stephens, which reviewed menus from each of the chain’s 5,500 U.S. locations. The company told CNBC that “beef suppliers across North America are currently facing production challenges,” and “some of our menu items may be temporarily limited at some restaurants.”

On social media, disappointed diners posted photographs of handmade signs at Wendy’s drive-throughs, warning that there was no beef on the menu because of a supplier issue. “We have many chicken products available for you to purchase,” one Ohio location offered instead.

Wendy’s famously guarantees that its beef patties are fresh and never frozen, but keeping that promise has grown complicated as coronavirus outbreaks force meatpacking plants across the country to close.

Many of the locations that ran out of burgers this week are located in states like Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee and New York where plant closures have disrupted the supply chain, according to the Stephens report. Other states, including Arizona and Nevada, haven’t seen widespread shortages.

Other fast-food chains haven’t run into the same problem because frozen beef remains widely available.

A combination of factors particular to tennis complicates its resumption before the development of a vaccine or, at minimum, significant strides in managing the pandemic.

Tennis is a global sport, with men’s and women’s tournaments scheduled this July through November in Europe, North America and Asia. Its athletes and officials live in all corners of the globe, which means any tournament would require extensive air travel.

And it’s governed by seven entities that would have to reach a consensus, including the Association of Tennis Professionals, the Women’s Tennis Association, the International Tennis Federation and organizers of the two Grand Slam events remaining on the 2020 calendar, the U.S. Open and the French Open.

Stronger steps are needed to protect and compensate federal employees in front-line positions at risk of exposure to the coronavirus, a group of senators said in a letter sent Tuesday to senior Trump administration officials.

Federal agencies also should be further pushed to allow full-time telework by all employees eligible to work remotely and to keep employees in paid status if they cannot telework but must stay home because they personally are at high risk, says a letter from Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and 18 other senators, most of them Democrats.

SEOUL — At least the game sounded the same.

The leathery pop of a strike into the catcher’s mitt was no different than before. A solid hit to center field still had that satisfying clap.

But little else was familiar Tuesday as South Korea’s professional baseball league began play in the sports-starved season of covid-19. There were no fans — although there were cheerleaders, all wearing masks, dancing to 25,000 empty seats in Seoul’s Jamsil stadium.

Fashion always finds a way. Human beings are undaunted in their search for ways to stand out, to communicate, to thrive in a treacherous environment. And so the face mask — once purely functional, once perceived as an exotic accessory — has evolved at breakneck speed into something more.

It’s more essential because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that Americans wear a mask when interacting with others. It’s more aesthetically pleasing. It’s also a more complicated cultural proposition. And, of course, the face mask is political because both the president and the vice president have refused to wear one on highly public occasions, and because some protesters have insinuated that masks are un-American.

As the country moves toward reopening, masks are assuredly part of our future. And in some ways, their evolution is the perfect encapsulation of how much life has changed in a blink of an eye — and how challenging, both intellectually and emotionally, it will be for us to go forward.

Annie Kelleher has been making tough medical decisions for years now, ever since she was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer.

The coronavirus pandemic pushed another anvil-size health-care decision onto her shoulders: Should she continue to welcome into her home the health aides who help her survive, even though they could be carrying the virus? Or should she eliminate all possible carriers of the virus and hope her husband can bear the load instead?

“They are so fundamental to my well-being at this point,” said Kelleher, 61, of Canton, Conn. “Even though I have a husband and he’s wonderful, they help me with things that he can’t.”

Thousands of Americans have faced a similar dilemma in the weeks since covid-19 paralyzed the nation, forced to choose between isolating themselves to guard against contracting a potentially fatal disease and continuing to receive the much-needed help of home health workers.

Americans remain deeply wary of eating at restaurants, shopping at stores and taking other steps to return to normalcy, a poll shows, even as the White House is contemplating shutting down its coronavirus task force.

With several covid-19 models taking a wrenching turn toward bleaker death forecasts in recent days because of reopening moves in some states, most Americans say they worry about getting the virus themselves and oppose ending the restrictions meant to slow its spread, according to the Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.

Experts around the country are revising their forecasts about the spread of the virus, and several models in the past three days suggest that resuming normal activity would spur a significant increase in the number of cases and deaths.