Your Evening Briefing

(Bloomberg) --

Two months ago, Wall Street was looking forward to jobs reports that offered clues on whether the longest economic expansion in U.S. history was slowing down. On Thursday, investors witnessed the wreckage of it crashing full speed into a wall. Some 3.28 million Americans filed for unemployment insurance last week, and while Congress is close to approving a $2 trillion rescue package that includes worker relief, there’s another problem. Many of those workers will soon be without health insurance at a moment when they need it most.

Bloomberg is mapping the spread of the coronavirus globally and in the U.S. For the latest news on the outbreak, sign up for our daily newsletter.

Here are today’s top stories

Globally, more than 23,000 are dead and 515,000 infected. In the U.S., more than 1,100 are dead and over 80,000 infected. Once unthinkable in the richest nation on Earth, hospitals across the country are drawing up plans to ration care. With scarce supplies, too few ventilators and staff falling ill, American doctors will soon be forced to pick which patients receive lifesaving care  and which do not.

In Europe, the coronavrius continues to decimate northern Italy, killing hundreds daily. But the hammer blow is landing full-force on Spain, too. People are dying in hospital waiting rooms before they can be admitted, and wards overflow with older patients. “That grandpa, in any other situation, would have had a chance,” one Spanish doctor said. “ But there’s so many of them, all dying at the same time.”

President Donald Trump’s failure to quickly address the threat of Covid-19, his repeated efforts to downplay it, his false statements as the storm gathered and his desire to curtail measures to stem its toll won’t, as some have said, make the crisis his Hurricane Katrina, Francis Wilkinson writes in Bloomberg Opinion. They will make it his Vietnam.

With millions out of work and millions more on the precipice, calls for a rent holiday are growing louder in the U.S. But Brian Chappatta writes in Bloomberg Opinion that such a remedy for suffering Americans would be a recipe for an even bigger economic disaster.

In what may be a sign of things to come, China said it will block almost all foreigners from entering the country. After having slowed the spread of the disease, visitors have become a new source of infection.

Workers charged with keeping the lights on in New York City, the epicenter of the pandemic in America, are now living on-site to avoid the coronavirus. While they work from work, all of those people lucky enough to work from home are about to break the internet.

What’s Lorcan Roche Kelly thinking about? The Bloomberg cross-asset editor is marveling at the aggressive approach of the usually staid European Central Bank. He says the emergency asset-purchase program gives it almost unlimited powers to buy whatever fixed income it wants, from whoever it wants. Still, Lorcan contends the response to the outbreak in the region should be more reliant on fiscal rather than monetary measures.

What you’ll need to know tomorrow

• The world’s hospitals are running out of rubber gloves.
• Morgue space in New York City was expanded with 45 cooler trucks.
• The worst of the region’s outbreak may soon hit New Jersey.
• In the U.K., millions of the self-employed have been promised help.
• Suddenly, there’s so much oil that there's nowhere to keep it.
• The U.S. just unveiled an indictment of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro.
• Voting by mail efforts in the U.S. are  gaining momentum.

What you’ll want to read tonight in Businessweek

If you were tested for Covid-19, it’s likely the swab used to collect a sample from inside your nose was made by Puritan Medical Products. Located in tiny Guilford, Maine, Puritan is one of two companies that make essentially all of the swabs used for coronavirus testing. Since testing has been seen by experts as critical to slowing the virus’s spread, the importance of Puritan to the fight against the virus is clear.

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