Boston’s Mayor Asks Residents To Wear A Cloth Mask, Advises Curfew; Shelters For Homeless Close In 17 States

Boston Globe: Walsh Recommends Curfew For Boston, Asks All To Wear Masks Outside Home
Mayor Martin J. Walsh on Sunday said he is asking everyone in Boston to observe a curfew and to wear masks when they are outside their homes, as the number of COVID-19 cases in the city and the state rises toward a peak that could test the region’s public health infrastructure in coming days. Walsh said the recommended curfew will be in place between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. starting Monday and running at least through May 4. (Rosen, 4/5)

Boston Globe: State’s Largest Construction Union Calls For A Monday Walkout Over Coronavirus Concerns 
Members of the region’s largest construction workers union are set to walk off the job Monday over mounting worries about coronavirus safety at building sites. The North Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters is directing its roughly 10,000 members in Massachusetts to stop working, effective Monday, saying it’s essentially impossible to keep construction sites safe from the spread of COVID-19. (Logan, 4/3)

Boston Globe: 24 More Coronavirus-Related Deaths, More Than 1,300 New Confirmed Cases In Mass.; Hospital Executive Pledges Salary To Lowest-Paid Workers
The state reported two dozen additional deaths attributed to the coronavirus Saturday, as the numbers of residents in long-term care facilities infected with the disease continued to grow, and the federal government prepared to send more ventilators to Massachusetts. While front-line health care workers face the growing numbers of patients with COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, some are stepping up. (Hilliard, 4/4)

Boston Globe: Homeless Facing ‘A Disaster For Families’ 
On any given night, roughly 3,700 families, or about 12,000 people, are without homes across Massachusetts. Most are living in shelters — temporary apartments or dorm-style rooms. Now, with the state plunged into a deep freeze to halt the coronavirus, these homeless families are struggling to secure basic necessities. Crowded facilities make social distancing nearly impossible. Food pantries are desperately strained, and with schools shut down and people out of work, homeless families are pinned down in rooms that are not their own, facing weeks that threaten to stretch into months of uncertainty. (Gay and Greenberg, 4/3)

Boston Globe: Amid Pandemic, State Moving Infected And Non-Infected Alike From Chelsea Soldiers’ Home
Amid a deadly cluster of coronavirus cases, state officials have begun transferring veterans out the Chelsea Soldiers’ Home, including those who aren’t infected but are at high risk — a move that has all but emptied the facility of confirmed cases, officials said Friday. The decision comes as officials are also grappling with another outbreak at the state Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke, where they have launched an investigation into how several deaths went unreported for days and at least 15 veterans have died after contracting the virus. Officials there plan to move as many of 20 veterans who’ve tested negative to a local hospital. (Stout, 4/3)

Boston Globe: Marijuana Companies Are Making Hand Sanitizer To Donate To Local Hospitals 
Revolutionary Clinics, one of the state’s largest cannabis providers, recently completed the first 100-gallon batch of hand sanitizer produced at its Fitchburg facility, and had it packaged and ready to be donated to local hospitals on Monday. The delivery is part of a larger movement within the state’s cannabis industry, which kicked into gear after John Hillier, a board member of the Commonwealth Dispensary Association (CDA), brought the feasibility of the project to the association’s attention. (Slane, 4/3)

Stateline: Some Shelters Shutter To Protect Homeless, Staff 
Like Harbor House, other homeless shelters around the country are being pushed to the brink by the pandemic. Even in the best of times, some 568,000 people live in shelters, on the streets or in a car. And now, shelters in at least 17 states plus Washington, D.C., have been forced to close, suspend services or otherwise limit their operations, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. (Wiltz, 4/6)

ProPublica: ‘Dead On Arrival’: A N.Y. Fire Chief’s COVID Journal
Simon Ressner is a battalion chief with the Fire Department of New York based in central Brooklyn. Twenty-five years ago, the department, nicknamed New York’s Bravest, took on the added role and responsibility of responding to emergency medical calls. Today, firefighters make some 300,000 runs a year. Last week, we asked Ressner, 60, to keep an informal diary of his latest 24-hour shift, a tour of duty that began at 9 a.m. on Friday, April 3. (4/5)

The Wall Street Journal: Texas Gets Double Punch From Coronavirus And Oil Shock. ‘There’s No Avoiding This One.’
Texas had one of the best economic records of any U.S. state after the 2008 financial crisis. In this crisis, it faces the prospect of a deep and prolonged downturn. The Lone Star State is exposed to many of the pandemic and shutdown’s economic ill consequences, with three cities—Austin, Houston and Dallas—home to an abundance of service-sector jobs, especially at risk. A downturn in the oil industry and other businesses big in Texas, including airlines and ports, will likely amplify its pain. Industry analysts expect the oil downturn to outlast the current viral outbreak. (Eaton and Hilsenrath, 4/5)

Houston Chronicle: Feds Could Cut 25% Of Houston’s FEMA Funding For Coronavirus Test Sites 
Federal authorities are expected to slash 25 percent of Houston’s funding to administer the city’s coronavirus testing sites and relocate six site workers. Mayor Sylvester Turner and U.S. Rep. Al Green, D-Houston, both warned about the cuts at press conferences Sunday. (Wu and Deam, 4/5)

New Orleans Times-Picayune: Louisiana Unions Irate As Texas Workers Brought In For Coronavirus Convention Center Jobs 
Some local union leaders are angered that dozens of workers have been brought in from Texas to help convert the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center into a medical facility to deal with the coronavirus crisis, at a time when hundreds of their members are out of work. The order to convert the convention center into a facility to provide up to 3,000 beds for spillover COVID-19 patients was made by Governor John Bel Edwards two weeks ago. (McAuley, 4/4)

New Orleans Times-Picayune: ‘I’ve Never Seen This’: Because Of Coronavirus, Makeshift Morgues Set Up In Metro New Orleans
Coroners offices and funeral homes throughout the New Orleans area are scrambling to store bodies and hold funeral services as deaths from the novel coronavirus continue to mount. State officials on Sunday reported the biggest daily jump in deaths from the relentless pandemic, with fatalities rising by 68 to 477. (Hassell and Stole, 4/5)

New Orleans Times-Picayune: Louisiana Nursing Homes With Coronavirus Clusters Won’t Be ID’d Anymore, Officials Say 
The state announced Friday that 60 residents of nursing homes and other long-term senior care facilities have died of the novel coronavirus, but in a reversal of previous practice said it would no longer publish a list of such facilities identified as clusters of the contagion. Instead, the state Department of Health said it would begin publishing a tally of homes where there are confirmed cases, residents who had tested positive and the number who have died. (Roberts III, 4/3)

The Hill: Tiger At Bronx Zoo Tests Positive For Coronavirus 
A tiger at the Bronx Zoo in New York City has tested positive for the coronavirus, while several other animals are being monitored for similar symptoms. In a press release, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which operates the zoo, said that the animals were likely infected by an asymptomatic carrier of the disease. It’s the first known case of the virus being detected in an animal in the U.S. as well as the first confirmed case in a tiger anywhere in the world. (Bowden, 4/5)

The Wall Street Journal: Tourist Towns Say, ‘Please Stay Away,’ During Coronavirus Lockdowns
Resort towns rely on visitors as their economic lifeblood, but as the new coronavirus pandemic rages, many are asking nonresidents to stay away. More than 12,000 residents of Cape Cod, Mass., signed a petition this week asking authorities to turn away visitors and nonresident homeowners from the two bridges that are the only access points to the Boston-area summertime playland. (Barrett, 4/6)

The Washington Post: Coronavirus Creates Conflict For Churches, Where Gatherings Can Be Dangerous But Also Provide Solace
Pastor Dan Ostring promised parishioners that, as Christians began marking their holiest week on this Palm Sunday, the Rivers of Living Water Church would be open for the fellowship, song and sermon that they have always celebrated together. He kept his public pledge, despite receiving hate mail all week warning that he would “burn in hell” if he opened the cross-covered doors of his tiny church. A few miles away, across the wide American River, a church more than 100 times larger than Ostring’s was shuttered late last month after scores of parishioners and a senior pastor tested positive for the novel coronavirus. (Wilson, Boorstein, Hernandez and Rozsa, 4/5)

KQED: California Coronavirus Testing Backlog Cut By Two-Thirds 
California has cut its COVID-19 testing backlog by more than two-thirds, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Saturday, but has still managed to test less than one half of 1% of the state’s nearly 40 million residents. (Beam and Nguyen, 4/5)

Detroit Free Press: Michigan GOP And Dems Divided Over Extending Whitmer’s Emergency Order
Michigan’s state of emergency should be extended until May 1 — not for the 70 days requested by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, House Speaker Lee Chatfield said in a Saturday letter. The shorter extension, which Chatfield, R-Levering, wants to vote on during a legislative session planned for Tuesday at the Capitol in Lansing, “will allow the governor to continue her important work while still giving local residents hope that they will have a real plan presented to them sooner than the end of June.” (Egan and Gray, 4/5)

WBUR: Kansas Gov. Says Federal Government Had A ‘Late Start’ On Stockpiling Medical Supplies
Senior adviser Jared Kushner sparked backlash at a Thursday press conference for saying the national stockpile of medical supplies does not belong to the states. Now, governors are pushing back. One of them is Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, whose state has only seen 620 cases but is preparing for more. (Hobson, 4/3)

The New York Times: Coronavirus In NJ: The Nurse Was Holding Up. Then Her 3 Close Relatives Were Brought In
Twelve doctors at her hospital and the chief executive were sickened with the coronavirus. A colleague had died. Patients as young as 19 were being placed on ventilators. But Michele Acito, the director of nursing at Holy Name Medical Center, in the hardest-hit town in New Jersey’s hardest-hit county, felt like she was holding up.Then her mother-in-law, sister-in-law and brother-in-law arrived. (Tully, 4/5)