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VOL. CLXIX . . . No. 58,676

As Neon Dims, Despair Grows On Vegas Strip

$3.00

NEW YORK, MONDAY, APRIL 27, 2020

© 2020 The New York Times Company

LARGE COMPANIES TAKE BAILOUT AID IN DUBIOUS GAINS

Gasping for Breaths the Size of a Tablespoon Healthy Hiker’s Grave Illness Highlights Virus’s Agonizing Mysteries

Service Workers Taking a Devastating Blow

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

When Valicia Anderson starts to count the people she knows in Las Vegas who have lost their jobs, she runs out of fingers fast.

Her husband, the breadwinner of her family and a restaurant worker in the Rio casino. All 25 of his co-workers. Her grown son, in a temp agency. The technician who does her nails. The barber who cuts her husband’s hair. Her best friend, a waitress. The three servers and a manager at the TGI Friday’s that is her family’s favorite treat.

She has to think hard to come up with a single person who is still being paid. So when the events of the last month start to overwhelm her, Mrs. Anderson walks into her bathroom, closes the door, sits at her vanity and takes deep breaths.

“You are pushing people up against a corner,” said Mrs. Anderson. Referring to officials in charge of the pandemic response, she added, “They want you to stay home, and you’re doing that, but they’re not helping you financially to keep you afloat while you’re at home.”

She added, “It doesn’t make sense.”

As the bottom fell out of the American economy, few places were hit harder than Las Vegas, where a full one-third of the local economy is in the leisure and hospitality industry, more than in any other major metropolitan area in Continued on Page A8

MATTHEW ABBOTT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Bondi Beach in Australia is closed over virus restrictions.

New Zealand And Australia Squash Curve

By DAMIEN CAVE

SYDNEY, Australia — Thousands of miles from President Trump’s combative news briefings, a conservative leader in Australia and a progressive prime minister in New Zealand are steadily guiding their countries toward a rapid suppression of the coronavirus outbreak.

Both nations are now reporting just a handful of new infections each day, down from hundreds in March, and they are converging toward an extraordinary goal: completely eliminating the virus from their island nations.

Whether they get to zero or not, what Australia and New Zealand have already accomplished is a remarkable cause for hope. Scott Morrison of Australia, a conservative Christian, and Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s darling of the left, are both succeeding with throwback democracy — in which partisanship recedes, experts lead, and quiet coordination matters more than firing up the base.

“This is certainly distinct from the United States,” said Dr. Peter Collignon, a physician and professor of microbiology at the Australian National University who has worked for the World Health Organization. “Here it’s not a time Continued on Page A7

LOANS AIMED AT OTHERS

By PAM BELLUCK

HINGHAM, Mass. — “Is he going to make it?” Kim Bello asked, clutching her phone, alone in her yard.

She had slipped outside so her three children, playing games in the living room, could be shielded from a wrenching conversation with a doctor treating her husband, Jim. For two weeks, he had been battling the coronavirus at Massachusetts General Hospital, on a ventilator and, for the past nine days, connected to a last-resort artificial heart-lung machine as well.

The physician, Dr. Emmy Rubin, gently told Ms. Bello that while her husband had a chance of surviving, “If you’re asking for an honest opinion, it’s more likely than not that he won’t.”

Mr. Bello, 49, an athletic and healthy lawyer, had developed a 103 degree fever in early March after a hike in the White Mountains in New Hampshire and landed in a suburban emergency room six days later, struggling to breathe.

Now, despite all his doctors had done, his lungs looked white as bone on his latest X-ray, with virtually no air-filled spaces — “one of the worst chest X-rays I’ve ever seen,” Dr. Paul Currier, another of his doctors, said.

As he lay in the intensive care unit, even a touch that caused slight movement to his heavily sedated and chemically paralyzed body could send his oxygen levels into a tailspin. Doctors worried his heart would stop, and if it did, they realized they wouldn’t be able to resuscitate him.

They had tried everything to help him, including experimental drugs, a low-tech maneuver of flipping him on his belly to improve airflow and the most sophisticated life support machine.

They were considering one more “Hail Mary” medical maneuver, but setting it up required cutting the machine-supplied oxygen for 30 seconds, a gap they did not think he could survive.

“Even if those were things that could help him, trying to do those would kill him,” said Dr. Yuval Raz, a key specialist on Mr. Bello’s team.

Mr. Bello’s cataclysmic spiral from avid skier, cyclist and runner to grievously ill patient — and the heartbreaking and triumphant twists in doctors’ relentless efforts to save him — underscores the agonizing challenges confronting even highly trained physicians and well-equipped hospitals battling a ferociously capricious virus.

Continued on Page A14

Millions Go to Applicants Facing Financial and Legal Problems This article is by Jessica SilverGreenberg, David Enrich, Jesse Drucker and Stacy Cowley.

A company in Georgia paid $6.5 million to resolve a Justice Department investigation — and, two weeks later, received a $10 million federally backed loan to help it survive the coronavirus crisis.

Another company, AutoWeb, disclosed last week that it had paid its chief executive $1.7 million in 2019 — a week after it received $1.4 million from the same loan program.

And Intellinetics, a software company in Ohio, got $838,700 from the government program — and then agreed, the following week, to spend at least $300,000 to purchase a rival firm.

The vast economic rescue package that President Trump signed into law last month included $349 billion in low-interest loans for small businesses. The so-called Paycheck Protection Program was supposed to help prevent small companies — generally those with fewer than 500 employees in the United States — from capsizing as the economy sinks into what looks like a severe recession.

The loan program was meant for companies that could no longer finance themselves through traditional means, like raising money in the markets or borrowing from banks under existing credit lines. The law required that the federal money — which comes at a low 1 percent interest rate and in some cases doesn’t need to be paid back — be spent on things like payroll or rent.

But the program has been riddled with problems. Within days of its start, its money ran out, prompting Congress to approve an additional $310 billion in fundContinued on Page A9

MARCH 14

MARCH 27

A Disinfectant That May Mar Trump’s Teflon

APRIL 8 PHOTOGRAPHS VIA MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL

Jim Bello’s chest X-rays from his stay at Mass General, where he was on a ventilator for 32 days. In his first, top, white space indicates areas of his lungs that were filled with fluid and inflamed cells; at middle, a total “whiteout”; above, the lungs starting to clear again.

By MATT FLEGENHEIMER

A Call Pierces the Lulls for Exhausted Paramedics: ‘Possible Covid’

By ALI WATKINS

whose days can be mundane until — suddenly — they are not.

The peak of the coronavirus epidemic in New York City — when paramedics were declaring scores of people dead a day — has passed, at least for now. Yet the virus still casts a shadow over everything they do. And when it resurfaces, it does so swiftly and with a vengeance.

Like the rest of the city, paramedics are facing an unnerving uncertainty: When can they see their loved ones again? When, if ever, can they return to normal?

And what if the virus comes back when they do?

“It’s a little bit overwhelming,” said Mr. Mahoney, 40. “But that’s what we signed up to do, right?”

Nearly two months into the coronavirus crisis, the strain has taken a heavy emotional and physical toll on paramedics. The city employs around 4,500 paramedics and emergency medical technicians, who are butContinued on Page A16

President Trump’s self-assessment has been consistent.

“I’m, like, a very smart person,” he assured voters in 2016.

“A very stable genius,” he ruled two years later.

“I’m not a doctor,” POLITICAL he allowed on MEMO Thursday, pointing to his skull inside the White House briefing room, “but I’m, like, a person that has a good you-know-what.”

Mr. Trump’s performance that evening, when he suggested that injections of disinfectants into the human body could help combat the coronavirus, did not sound like the work of a doctor, a genius, or a person with a good you-know-what.

Even by the turbulent standards of this president, his musings on virus remedies have landed with uncommon force, drawing widespread condemnation as dangerous to the health of Americans and inspiring a nearuniversal alarm that many of his past remarks — whether offensive or fear-mongering or simply untrue — did not.

Mr. Trump’s typical namecalling can be recast to receptive audiences as mere “counterContinued on Page A10

The paramedics Kenny Cheng, left, and Sean Mahoney looked at information on a 911 call as it came in from their dispatcher.

For seven and a half hours, the two New York City paramedics had worked a surprisingly normal shift: a few people with difficulty breathing, one trip to the hospital — and, miraculously it seemed, no clear cases of coronavirus.

They were about to head back to their station when an urgent call flashed over their dispatch screen: cardiac arrest, with a patient who had been feeling sick for a week.

“Heads up,” a radio barked.

“Possible Covid.”

The paramedics, Sean Mahoney and Kenny Cheng, rushed to the apartment building, donned gowns, goggles and face masks and restarted the patient’s heart.

But then the person crashed. The ambulance doors closed as Mr. Cheng frantically began chest compressions. Moments later, the patient was dead.

Such is the disturbing new normal for the city’s paramedics,

ARTS C1-7

OBITUARIES D7-8

ERIN SCHAFF/THE NEW YORK TIMES

INTERNATIONAL A17-19

SPORTSMONDAY D1-6

NATIONAL A20-21

U.S. Now Points to Iran Deal

Where the Score Didn’t Matter

A Murky Killing in Georgia

Exploring Forced Migration

Inspiration for ‘Bull Durham’

To pressure Tehran, the secretary of state is set to argue that the U.S. remains a participant in the Obama-era nuclear accord, which President Trump abandoned two years ago.

PAGE A18

Sopan Deb writes about how he reconnected with his father after 30 years, on a clay tennis court in India.

PAGE D1

A 25-year-old black man running through a neighborhood was shot. A prosecutor argued that his white pursuers should not be charged.

PAGE A20

Serge Alain Nitegeka can’t leave South Africa, but his art, on the refugee condition, is traveling.

PAGE C1

An erratic pitcher with an amazing fastball, Steve Dalkowski never made it to the majors. He was 80.

PAGE D7

Bringing Back the ’90s

Overlooked No More

Jailed After Finding Graves The discovery of a Stalin-era site by Yuri Dmitriev “has clearly made some people very uncomfortable,” his daughter says.

PAGE A17

Katie Ledecky Hits the Books The five-time Olympic champ is studying infectious diseases at Stanford and finding creative ways to train. PAGE D2

BUSINESS B1-6

Michelin Revives Production Amid union objections in France, the tire company’s C.E.O. says it’s time to “learn how to live with Covid-19.”

PAGE B1

Rumors Badger North Korea

Condé Nast’s Looming Crisis

Speculation over its leader’s health, and his possible death, has only increased over the past two weeks.

PAGE A19

Anna Wintour made the company the embodiment of boomer excess. Can it survive the challenges ahead? PAGE B1

Young stars have become enamored with artifacts of the Y2K era. Below, Normani’s “Motivation” video. PAGE C2

An amateur scientist, Eunice Foote found that greenhouse gases would raise Earth’s temperature.

PAGE D8 EDITORIAL, OP-ED A22-23

Kirsten Gillibrand

PAGE A23

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MONDAY, APRIL 27, 2020 ~ VOL. CCLXXV NO. 98

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Business & Finance illions of credit-card holders can’t pay their debt amid coronavirus-induced financial distress and lenders are bracing for the impact. A1

M

Business leaders say they expect supply-chain problems to remain even as countries start to reopen their economies. B1, B3 Carnival raised billions in the bond market after the Fed stepped in, at rates far lower than it had earlier discussed with hedge funds, though at a potential future cost. B1 Boeing dropped plans to take control of Embraer’s jetliner business, saving cash but adding uncertainty to its own product strategy. B3 At least 13 of the public companies that got coronavirus hardship loans said they would return the money. B5

World-Wide Some U.S. states took tentative steps toward reopening from coronavirus lockdowns, as officials debated how quickly to remove restrictions amid uncertainty about when the worst of the pandemic would subside. A1 Trump told Azar he wants to keep him as Health and Human Services chief, after learning of discussions under way in the White House about replacing the secretary. A4 The U.K.’s Johnson was set to return to work after recovering from a coronavirus infection to face critical decisions over how and when to reopen the British economy. A8 China offered a new route for medical-goods producers to obtain export approval, a move that could help ease recent shipment delays. A7 Trump’s new arms-control envoy faces major hurdles to obtaining a nuclear-armscontrol agreement among the U.S., China and Russia. A3 North Korea’s silence about Kim’s health is amplifying speculation about the leader’s condition as rumors swirl over his absence. A9 A mountain mine in California is poised to get a boost from the Pentagon, which sees the rare-earth metals it extracts there as vital for national defense. A3 CONTENTS Business & FinanceB2,5,6 Business News....... B3 Crossword.............. A14 Heard on Street... B10 Life & Arts...... A11-13 Markets...................... B9

Opinion.............. A15-17 Outlook....................... A2 Sports....................... A14 Technology................ B4 U.S. News............. A2-3 Weather................... A14 World News............ A9

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s 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

By Jennifer Calfas, Talal Ansari and Natasha Khan

BIG STEP: In Barcelona, two sisters played outdoors Sunday, as children under age 14 were allowed to leave their homes for the first time since a state of emergency was declared on March 14. They are still restricted to one hour outdoors a day.

Credit-Card Users Feel the Crunch

BY ANNAMARIA ANDRIOTIS AND ORLA MCCAFFREY Robert Rodriguez and Migdalia Wharton, a married couple in Orlando, Fla., have been out of work for more than a month and can’t afford to pay their credit-card bills.

When they called Capital One Financial Corp. to explain, the bank told them they could skip their April payments. But they doubt they will have money in May. Ms. Wharton, a school-bus driver, was told she wouldn’t get paid until school reopens. Mr. Rodriguez, a can-

InvestorBacked Hospital Demanded A Bailout

BY BRIAN SPEGELE AND LAURA COOPER Pennsylvania’s governor was urgently preparing for a surge in Covid-19 cases last month when a private-equityowned hospital said it would shut its doors unless the state secured a $40 million bailout.

Steward Health Care System LLC said it needed the money from the state in three days or “Easton Hospital will no longer be able to serve the community’s health-care needs and will be forced to close,” read a letter to the governor from Steward, which is owned by $43 billion New York investment firm Cerberus Capital Management LP. Gearing up for an expected surge in patients, Pennsylvania didn’t want to lose any hospital beds, local and state officials said. “That’s how they kept the state hostage,” said Sal Panto, Easton’s mayor and a member of the hospital’s board of trustees.

Private-equity investors including Cerberus poured around $200 billion into U.S. health-care buyouts in the past decade. But a playbook that often includes loading portfolio companies with debt, selling assets to lock in profits Please turn to page A6

cer survivor, is worried for his health and has stopped driving for Uber.

“We don’t know what we’re going to do,” Mr. Rodriguez said.

Millions of people in the U.S. are skipping their credit-card payments as the coronavirus pandemic puts them out of work. Banks and other lenders that for years relied on heavy consumer spending to create big profits are preparing to struggle alongside their customers.

As the economy spirals, credit-card payments are one

of the first places where the effects will show up. They are often the first loans people stop paying when money is tight.

They are usually unsecured, which means lenders have little recourse if a borrower stops paying.

Many large card issuers, including Capital One, Discover Financial Services and Synchrony Financial, are letting borrowers pause their creditcard payments for a month or longer. Some are lowering or waiving late fees and interest charges, or even forgiving porPlease turn to page A2

The Outlook: GDP likely to go from bad to worse, A2 Farmers dump crops as supply chain is disrupted, A6 Lockdown tests U.K.’s returning leader, A8 Your video therapist will see you now, A11

Coronavirus Means the Era Of Big Government Is Back

Stock Rebound Stirs Doubts Conflicting signals in the global economy have some investors worried about recent gains. B1 S&P 500 peak-to-trough decline around notable recessions March 1933 June 2009 June 1938 March 1975 Oct. 1945 Nov. 2001 Nov. 1970 April 2020 Nov. 1982 April 1958 Oct. 1949 –100%

THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC

Salons, retailers and other businesses in several U.S. states started to reopen over the weekend, as governors began easing restrictions in some sectors in an effort to begin to repair the battered economy.

Around the world, too, officials began moves to ease restrictions. Hard-hit Italy announced a timetable for reopening beginning in May, while Spain allowed children to leave their homes after six weeks under one of the strictest lockdowns in the world.

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to return to work on Monday after recovering from symptoms that hospitalized him for a week, the government said.

In the U.S., the rate of growth in infections in some parts of the country has appeared to slow, some health Please turn to page A4

National shocks through history have had lasting expansive effects

BY GERALD F. SEIB AND JOHN MCCORMICK

–50

History shows that big national shocks have a way of changing the role of government in lasting ways—and any shock as big as the coronavirus pandemic inevitably will alter political life and philosophies in America.

The crisis has been not just a public-health emergency requiring a sweeping response, but also the cause of the most searing economic pain since the Great Depression, summoning forth a multi-trillion-dollar government intervention into the economy.

Much of today’s new government activism will recede over time along with the virus. Yet conversations with a broad cross-section of political figures suggest there is little reason

0

Note: Sorted by end date of each recession except for current period Sources: Dow Jones Market Data; FactSet

Live Zoo Cams Offer Solace For Humans on Lockdown i

i

to expect a return to what had been the status quo on federal spending, or the prevailing attitude toward the proper role of government.

“The era of Ronald Reagan, that said basically the government is the enemy, is over,” said Rahm Emanuel, a moderate Democrat who served as mayor of Chicago, a member of Congress and President Obama’s first White House chief of staff.

An echo came from the other side of the political spectrum. “The era of Robert Taft, limited-government conservatism?” said Steve Bannon, President Trump’s onetime political guru, referring to the Ohio senator who fought the expansion of government programs and federal borrowing. “It’s not relevant. It’s Please turn to page A10

INSIDE

i

In role reversal, it’s the people who find themselves caged up; one special penguin

BY MIKE CHERNEY AND DANIELA HERNANDEZ Devin Madson, a 33-yearold fantasy author, doesn’t like feeling caged in her home in the Australian countryside because of the coronavirus lockdown. But she feels better after seeing giraffes wander around a zoo pen.

“I didn’t realize how much stress I had been carrying

around until I was watching giraffes,” said Ms. Madson, who devoted one of her computer screens to a live video of the animals at Melbourne Zoo. “I thought, ‘Look at those beautiful, calm, graceful animals just walking around, just happily living their normal life.’ It was like a beautiful piece of normal.”

Humans are finding comPlease turn to page A10

SAUL MARTINEZ/BLOOMBERG NEWS

J.C. Penney, battered by missteps and the rise of ecommerce, is on the verge of being done in by the coronavirus pandemic. B1

More U.S. states took limited steps toward reopening from lockdowns spurred by the new coronavirus, as federal and state officials debated how quickly to remove restrictions amid uncertainty about the path of the pandemic.

STEVEN LEE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The economy should bounce back in July, August and September as businesses closed by the coronavirus resume operations, Mnuchin said. A4

Some businesses open as a top official says social distancing could go through summer JOSEP LAGO/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

A Cerberus-controlled Pennsylvania community hospital called for $40 million as the state prepared to treat Covid-19 patients. A1

YEN 107.48

States Begin to Restart Battered Economy

A Carefree Dash as Spain Eases Up on Its Restrictions

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SPORTS Baseball is back in Taiwan, with cardboard cutouts in the stands A14

BUSINESS The pandemic has sped up J.C. Penney’s march toward bankruptcy. B1

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latimes.com

MONDAY, APRIL 27, 2020

© 2020

‘Where are the ... heart attacks?’

Tech issues plague jobless filings

Doctors worry that patients with strokes and other dire issues are avoiding ERs.

By Joel Rubin California’s hospital emergency departments are strangely quiet places these days.

Before the coronavirus hit, tens of thousands of people across the state sought emergency help each day.

But in the weeks since the virus began its spread throughout the U.S., those numbers have plummeted by a third to a half, according to physicians overseeing emergency departments in hospitals across Los Angeles County and elsewhere in California.

The steep decline comes amid drastic measures hospitals have put in place to prepare for what health officials fear could be a wave of patients infected by the coronavirus like the ones that have overwhelmed hospitals in New York City and elsewhere.

So far, the numbers of people sickened by the virus in California have been manageable. But now doctors and health officials are increasingly worried that steps taken to keep hospitals at the ready, along with a widespread public fear the virus is rife in emergency rooms, have left people who are in immediate need of lifesaving help unwilling to seek treatment.

“Where are the strokes and the heart attacks?

Where are the diabetics having complications?” said Dr. Larry Stock, an emergency physician at Antelope Valley Hospital. “These cases didn’t just vaporize with the virus. I worry people are suffering at home because they’re afraid our emergency rooms are radioactive.”

Physicians and health officials are amending their urgent warnings about the virus to stress that emergency departments are not overrun and can treat people safely.

[See Decline, A8]

Californians seeking benefits have faced jammed phone lines, computer errors and antiquated processes.

By Patrick McGreevy and Kim Christensen

Marcus Yam Los Angeles Times

DR. KEITH Yablonicky and registered nurse Angela Choi at Sharp Memorial Hospital in San Diego. Since

the pandemic began, emergency room visits have fallen as much as 50%, according to California physicians.

Distancing urged through summer White House advisor says social limits must continue, even as some states ease rules.

By Laura King WASHINGTON — Social distancing must continue through the summer, White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx said Sunday, even as some states began moving to ease shutdown and stay-at-home guidelines meant to stem the spread of the pathogen.

As the U.S. death toll from the virus neared 55,000 — the highest fatality total for any country, and nearly equaling the number of Americans who died in the Vietnam War — a nationwide debate intensified over the weekend about how best to balance economic imperatives and public health needs amid the pandemic.

Some governors, mostly in the South, who have given the go-ahead to reopen some businesses defended their decisions in television interviews, while counter[See Distancing, A9]

John Spink Atlanta Journal-Constitution

CHRIS EDWARDS, left, owner of Peachtree Battle Barber Shop in Atlanta, dons

a face mask while cutting a customer’s hair on Friday, the day of its reopening.

More people are Can alpine concept Face shields are hasten immunity? also recommended tuning into Spotify Israeli scientists propose a “controlled avalanche.”

PERSPECTIVES, A2

Experts say essential workers could use plastic barriers. CALIFORNIA, B2

The streaming service’s podcast business grows amid crisis. CALENDAR, E1

Riverside County inmates, jailers face ‘an invisible beast’

By Alene Tchekmedyian and Kailyn Brown

Bagus Saragih AFP/Getty Images

A COVID-19 victim’s coffin arrives at a cemetery in Jakarta, Indonesia. The city

recorded 4,400 burials in March, 40% higher than any month since January 2018.

Indonesia’s late war on virus Denial and dithering have added to flood of deaths

By David Pierson SINGAPORE — The president’s herbal remedy didn’t work, and the cost is heavy across Indonesia: Medical workers wear raincoats and garbage bags to guard against a killer disease. Gravediggers struggle to keep up with a surge of plastic-wrapped coffins.

And an army of migrant workers faces hunger as the economy slips toward recession.

The world’s fourth most

populous country is paying a stiff price for its delayed response to the coronavirus.

The crisis, which could result in thousands more dead by next month, was probably avoidable, health workers and policy experts say.

The central government didn’t impose major restrictions on movement and gatherings until April 10, almost six weeks after a dance instructor in West Java was identified as the first of thousands of Indonesian COVID-19 patients.

“We had almost two

months to prepare,” said Kamila Fitri, a doctor at a hospital in the capital, Jakarta, the outbreak’s epicenter, who hasn’t seen her home in a month because she doesn’t want to risk infecting her parents and two younger siblings. “Compared to other countries, we reacted too late.”

Fitri and her medical colleagues have been worried since February that hospitals would be overwhelmed in a country that has seven times fewer doctors per [See Indonesia, A4]

For two weeks in early March, Riverside County Sheriff ’s Deputy Terrell Young routinely drove inmates, one at a time, from the Cois M. Byrd Detention Facility in Murrieta to a hospital for medical appointments.

During those trips he was exposed to several people, including inmates and a nurse, who would later test positive for the coronavirus.

When Young reported to work on March 22, he felt ill and realized he had a fever.

Early in his shift, he notified a supervisor and went home.

But by then, he and others probably had been spreading the virus — without knowing — for days.

Less than two weeks later, Young died at age 52.

Now, the agency is grappling with one of the largest jail outbreaks of COVID-19 in the state. The latest figures show some 136 inmates and 71 Sheriff ’s Department employees have been infected.

Many have recovered, but a second deputy and now an inmate have died.

Early on, Sheriff Chad Bianco said he would not let inmates out early because of the disease.

“I feel very strongly that

the inmates we have remaining in custody pose a much greater risk to public safety than the risk this virus poses to them while they are in custody,” he said.

But civil rights advocates have described the agency’s efforts to protect people who live and work in the jails as woefully inadequate.

Inmates said they fear their jail terms could turn into death sentences. Deputies worry about bringing the virus home to their families.

A federal judge found that the Sheriff ’s Department “failed to demonstrate that it is currently taking adequate precautions” to protect those in custody and ordered officials to submit a plan to achieve physical distancing.

“The sheriff is really, as far as I know, standing alone in refusing to reduce the jail population at all,” said Sara Norman, an attorney with the Prison Law Office who sued over jail conditions.

“L.A., not enough, again, but they are taking steps. Only in Riverside has the sheriff said: Nope.”

The nation’s overcrowded jails and prisons have become hotbeds of infection, spreading among inmates and staff.

At Cook County Jail in Chicago, 463 inmates and [See Jails, A12]

SACRAMENTO — For Californians desperate to get unemployment assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic, the last month has been a perfect storm of failures for a state government with a long history of technology problems.

Many seeking jobless benefits in recent weeks found phone lines jammed at the state Employment Development Department and had their calls disconnected before they could talk to a live service representative at the agency, which processes unemployment insurance claims.

Others said their attempts to file applications at the state’s unemployment insurance online portal were greeted with error messages, frozen screens and other glitches, showing that the state’s technology systems were woefully unprepared for a disaster of this magnitude.

With millions of Californians thrown out of work by the state’s stay-at-home order, services offered by the EDD have buckled under a lack of sufficient technology to support them, an issue that has plagued the agency for years but has now been put into stark relief by the current crisis.

“I know this sounds crazy because we are in California, we are the tech center of the world, but our system is built on multiple antiquated systems, and because of that it is inflexible — it is very difficult to change,” California Labor Secretary Julie Su said in a Facebook Live chat Friday.

State officials have scrambled to roll out improvements to the claims process, including extending call center hours and even suspending a requirement that applicants certify their eligibility for benefits, but despite the measures, many jobless people say they still have not received the financial assistance they need.

The effort to resolve problems with the claims system is all the more urgent because the state on Tuesday will begin accepting millions of unemployment assistance claims from those previously excluded [See Jobless, A9]

California unemployment claims Weekly initial claims, including approved and denied, processed in the last month.

925,450 878,727 660,966 533,568

186,333

March 21

March 28

April 4

April 11

April 18

Employment Development Department Los Angeles Times