The latest More than 100,000 people in the United States have tested positive for the coronavirus, a world-topping caseload that has increased tenfold in the past week and a half, and that many experts predict will continue to rise for weeks or months. The actual number of infections is almost certainly much larger because only a fraction of 1 percent of Americans have been tested, far behind countries such as South Korea and Italy. "Two weeks ago, President Trump promised a network of drive-through covid-19 testing sites across the country where people could be tested 'very safely, quickly and conveniently,'" The Washington Post reported. But big-box store CEOs who said they would turn their parking lots into test sites have opened only five such locations, and some state-run sites sit idle waiting for testing supplies. Though much of the country has been ordered to stay at home to slow the virus's spread, many federal workers are still required to come to the office under potentially dangerous conditions, a Post investigation found. "Hundreds of front-line workers sit side by side in small cubicles processing passport applications for the State Department," the report said. "The employees have 15 minutes a day to wipe their desks clean with supplies they must bring from home." Hundreds of Americans are dying each day from the disease — approaching 2,000 in total — and death-care workers are struggling to cope with the influx in New York, the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States. Amid fears that bodies could spread the disease, refrigerated trucks, tents and "a pop-up morgue" are being deployed to store the overload. Hospital chaplains are delivering last rites through video chat or by standing outside patients' doors. Trump has abruptly moved toward federalizing the country's fight against the virus in the past two days, after weeks of leaving states to implement their own policies and find their own medical supplies. On Saturday, the president told reporters, "There's a possibility that sometime today we'll do a quarantine, short-term, two weeks, on New York. Probably New Jersey. Parts of Connecticut." The statement appeared to surprise and confuse New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D), who told reporters: "I don't even know what that means." Trump has also taken more control of the medical supply chain. He invoked a wartime power on Friday that will allow him to order private manufacturers to build ventilators, and promised that General Motors and other companies would produce a combined 100,000 ventilators in the next 100 days. (A 2005 study estimated the United States would need more than 740,000 of the machines in a severe pandemic.) Distrust and hostility between the White House and governors in some of the worst-hit states continues to complicate the fight against the virus. Trump said Friday that he told Vice President Pence, who leads the White House's coronavirus task force, not to call two governors who have criticized the federal government: Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). "I want them to be appreciative," Trump said. "We've done a great job." The White House announced Saturday that Trump granted Whitmer's request for a disaster declaration, despite the tension. The president also picked a fight with Congress immediately after it passed a historic $2.2 trillion economic aid package on Friday. As Trump signed the bill into law, he released a statement undermining the power of a Senate-approved inspector general, who is supposed to supervise how the Treasury Department would disburse $400 billion in loans to companies and local governments. The oversight measure was key to winning Democratic support for the bill, but Trump's statement indicates he intends to oversee himself. | 
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