Your Evening Briefing

31 Mar 2020, 03:51 AM IST

(Bloomberg) --

The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits may set a record for a second straight week, following last week’s report of 3.28 million filings. The darkest prediction sees that figure almost doubling. And with so many out of work, nobody knows what will happen when $81 billion worth of rent comes due April 1. Tenants in New York City may be allowed to use existing security deposits, but it would be a temporary fix at best. But despite the looming threat of monstrous jobless numbers and a new kind of housing crisis, investors were exuberant Monday: stocks rallied for the fourth time in five days.

Bloomberg is mapping the pandemic globally and across America. For the latest news, sign up for our Covid-19 podcast and daily newsletter.

Here are today’s top stories

Globally, more than 36,000 are dead and 770,000 infected with the coronavirus. The World Health Organization says Europe’s infection rate is expected to start stabilizing soon. In the U.S., new cases in hard-hit New York slowed a bit, though fatalities did not. Several states, including New Jersey and Florida, have arrested people for allegedly violating social-distancing orders, including a megachurch pastor who insisted on holding Sunday services. Here’s the latest.

Italy needs to mass quarantine Covid-19 patients instead of letting them isolate at home, according to a visiting group of Chinese experts who say they made the same error early in the outbreak. The WHO says the European nation has made progress, but law enforcement fears the depressed southern half of the nation could descend into chaos.

A 100-year-old tuberculosis vaccine is being investigated as a potential weapon against the pathogen. The bacillus Calmette-Guerin shot seems to train the body’s first line of immune defense to better fight infections. U.S. regulators also granted the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine an emergency-use designation. The drug hasn’t been proven effective against the coronavirus, and several people who took it became sick or died after President Donald Trump began publicly touting it.

General Motors undertook a four week sprint to build badly needed ventilators. This is how they did it.

Hundreds of thousands of India’s poorest are journeying by foot back to their villages in a kind of mass exodus not seen since partition. It could spread Covid-19 across the country.

The Pentagon is struggling to stay ahead of the expanding pandemic as early missteps pile up, a scattershot response sows confusion and the Navy is forced to sideline an aircraft carrier.

What’s Joe Weisenthal thinking about? The Bloomberg news director says the world’s richest can’t get their hands on physical gold. As with most every other commodity, its supply chain is being disrupted. But unlike other commodities, demand is absolutely soaring

What you’ll need to know tomorrow

Joe Biden says he’s “frustrated” by Trump’s slow virus response.
Wall Street is quietly telling companies not to draw on their loans.
U.S. colleges are waiving standardized testing requirements.
Coronavirus remains a problem on cruise ships.
Apple’s infamously secretive culture is tested in employee homes.
Wholesalers offer uni and wagyu to consumers at fire sale prices.
David Geffen’s Instagram-perfect yacht isolation draws outrage.

What you’ll want to read in Bloomberg Prognosis

In the early evening of Tuesday, March 17, Ninfa Mehta watched a woman die. The doctor, who is the medical director of the emergency department at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York, was gazing through a glass door into a patient’s room. Inside, a physician in full protective gear and gloves was sitting on the side of the bed holding a woman’s hand as she held a mobile phone up to her ear so she could hear her children saying goodbye.