Coronavirus Live Updates: C.D.C. Suggests Radical Changes to the American Office Space

New federal guidance on how to safely reopen businesses would transform the corporate work experience. Epicenters of the pandemic shift both across the U.S. and around the world. Day cares are reopening, leaving parents with tough choices.

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At least 101,000 people in the United States have died from the coronavirus, and more than 1.7 million have been infected, according to a New York Times database.

Protective barriers were installed between cubicles at the infection prevention division of the University of California, Irvine.

Credit...Alex Welsh for The New York Times

As the C.D.C. recommends workplace changes, millions of the unemployed have more immediate concerns.

Upon arriving at work, employees should get a temperature and symptom check.

Inside the office, desks should be six feet apart. If that isn’t possible, employers should consider erecting plastic shields around them.

Seating should be barred in common areas.

And face coverings should be worn at all times.

These are among sweeping new recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the safest way for American employers to reopen their offices to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

If followed, the guidelines would lead to a far-reaching remaking of the corporate work experience. They even upend years of advice on commuting, urging people to drive to work by themselves, instead of taking mass transportation or car-pooling, to avoid potential exposure to the virus.

But for more than 40 million Americans left jobless by the pandemic, there is a more immediate concern: how will they survive when government assistance programs run dry.

The multitrillion-dollar patchwork of federal and state programs hasn’t kept bills from piling up or prevented long lines at food banks. But it has mitigated the damage. Now the expiration of those programs represents a cliff that individuals and the economy are hurtling toward.

The $1,200 checks sent to most households are long gone, at least for those who needed them most, with little imminent prospect for a second round. The lending program that helped millions of small businesses keep workers on the payroll will wind down if Congress does not extend it. Eviction moratoriums that are keeping people in their homes are expiring in many cities.

And the $600 per week in extra unemployment benefits that has allowed tens of millions of laid-off workers to pay rent and buy groceries will expire at the end of July. 

new hot spots emerge, the pandemic may be entering another phase.

Downtown Los Angeles this month.

Credit..Philip Cheung for The New York Times

The most basic way to track the progress of any outbreak is by seeing how many new cases and deaths are reported in a given area each day. And in the United States, falling numbers in some of the hardest-hit places are encouraging. Totals for the countryhave been on a downward curve, and in former hot spots like New York and New Jersey, the counts appear to have peaked.

But infections and deaths are rising in more than a dozen states, an ominous sign that the pandemic may be entering a new phase.

Wisconsin saw its highest single-day increase in confirmed cases and deathsthis week, two weeks after the state’s highest court overturned a stay-at-home order. Cases are also on the rise in Alabama, Arkansas, California and North Carolina, which on Thursday reported some of the state’s highest numbers of hospitalizations and reported deaths since the crisis began.

In metropolitan areas like Fayetteville, Ark.; Yuma, Ariz.; and Roanoke and Charlottesville, Va., data show new highs may be only days or weeks away.

The pace is quickening worldwide, too. According to data compiled by The New York Times, nearly 700,000 new known infections have been reported just in the past week.

Outbreaks have accelerated especially sharply in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, leading the World Health Organization to say on Tuesday that it considered the Americas to be the new center of the pandemic.

And although much of the Middle East seemed to avert early catastrophe even as the virus ravaged Iran, case counts have been swelling in Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Reported cases are not perfect measures to chart the spread of the virus because they depend on how much testing is done. Death counts are less dependent on testing, though official numbers are typically undercounts. Both counts, though, can indicate how the outbreak is evolving, especially in places where lockdown rules are easing or where governments have been ineffective at slowing the spread, and offer early clues about new hot spots.

That is why Wisconsin is being closely monitored. Two weeks ago, the conservative majority on the State Supreme Court overturned that state’s stay-at-home order, effectively removing the most serious restrictions on residents.

It can take several weeks after changes in behavior — like the increased movement and interactions associated with the end of a stay-at-home order — for the effect on transmissions to be reflected in the data. In Wisconsin, there were indications that the virus was still spreading before the order was lifted. But in the weeks since restrictions were overturned, the case numbers have continued to grow.

“It worries us,” said Dr. Nasia Safdar, the medical director for infection prevention at the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison. “We wonder if this is a trend in an unfavorable direction.”

Five Ways to Monitor the Coronavirus Outbreak in the U.S.

In many places across the U.S., cases and deaths appear to have peaked or are starting to flatten. But there is a lot of regional variation.

April 23, 2020