Connecticut Joins N.Y. in Tightening Rules Over Virus: Live Updates

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Friday issued a sweeping edict meant to compel New Yorkers to stay indoors as much as possible, ordering all nonessential businesses to keep their workers home as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the state raced toward 8,000.

New York State, with 6 percent of the U.S. population, now accounts for around half of all cases in the country.

Here are the highlights of Mr. Cuomo’s executive order, which takes effect Sunday at 8 p.m.:

• Healthy people under 70 should limit outdoor activity to getting groceries and medicine, but they may exercise, walk outside and participate in other noncontact physical activities if they stay six feet away from others.

• Mass transit will keep running, but people should not use it unless they absolutely must. Roads will remain open.

• Nonessential gatherings of any size for any reason are banned.

• There are stronger restrictions for people who are 70 and older, have compromised immune systems or have underlying illnesses. Those rules include wearing masks when in the company of others and not visiting households with multiple people.

• Businesses considered nonessential must keep all of their workers at home.

• Essential businesses that can stay open include: grocers and restaurants, health care providers, pharmacies, gas stations, convenience stores, banks, hardware stores, laundromats and cleaners, child-care providers, auto repair shops, utility companies, warehouses and distributors, delivery services, plumbers and other skilled contractors, animal-care providers, transportation providers, construction companies and many kinds of manufacturers.

• Businesses that violate the order will be fined and forced to close. The state does not plan to fine people who violate the regulations, Mr. Cuomo said.

“These provisions will be enforced,” the governor said at a briefing in Albany. “These are not helpful hints.”

Gov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut issued an order similar to Mr. Cuomo’s on Friday, and Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey said he planned to order on Saturday that all nonessential businesses in that state shut down as well.

The outbreak thrusts New York’s hospital system toward a crisis.

For weeks, as the coronavirus has spread across the globe, New York officials have warned that a surge of cases could overwhelm the state’s health care system, jeopardizing thousands of patients.

Now, it seems, the surge has arrived.

In a startlingly quick ascent, New York reported on Friday that the state was closing in on 8,000 positive tests, about half of the cases in the United States. The number was 10 times higher than what was reported earlier in the week.

The sharp increase is thrusting the medical system toward a crisis point, officials said.

In the Bronx, doctors at Lincoln Hospital and Health Center said they have only a few remaining ventilators for patients who needed them to breathe. In Brooklyn, doctors at Kings County Hospital Center say they are so low on supplies that they are reusing masks for up to a week, slathering them with hand sanitizer between shifts.

Some of the jump in New York’s cases can be traced to ramped-up testing, which the state began this week. But the escalation, and the response, could offer other states a glimpse of what might be in store if the virus continues to spread. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Friday urged residents to stay indoors and ordered nonessential businesses to keep workers home.

As it prepares for the worst-case projections, the state is asking retired health care workers to volunteer to help. The city is considering trying to turn the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan, the largest convention center in the country, into a makeshift hospital.

Case numbers continue their startling rise.

Friday afternoon, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in New York State stood at 7,845, according to the most recent data from the city and state — a jump of more than 2,000 from Thursday. There were 5,151 confirmed cases in the city, Mr. de Blasio said.

Of the cases in the city, 1,518 were in Brooklyn, 1,406 in Queens, 1,314 in Manhattan, 667 in the Bronx, and 242 in Staten Island.

The state performed 10,000 tests overnight, bringing the total number of people tested in the state to 32,427, officials said. Around 1,250 people were hospitalized, a hospitalization rate of 18 percent, the governor said.

Mr. Cuomo said New York was now testing more people per capita than China or South Korea.

As testing has ramped up rapidly in the state and the virus spreads, confirmed cases have grown at a breathtaking pace: When the week began, there were only about 700 cases in the state. Now there are about 10 times that.

Mr. Murphy said on Friday that 890 people in New Jersey had tested positive for the virus and that 11 had died, up from nine on Thursday. In Connecticut, officials reported 35 new confirmed cases on Friday, bringing the state’s total to 194. Four Connecticut residents have died of the virus.

Broadway, closed by pandemic, reaches a short-term pay deal.

Broadway producers have agreed to pay hundreds of actors, musicians, stagehands and others for the first few weeks of the industry’s shutdown, and to cover their health insurance for at least a month.

The “emergency relief agreement,” which was announced late Friday, was negotiated by the Broadway League, a trade group, with 14 labor unions representing various workers, including ushers, makeup artists and publicists.

The Broadway shutdown, prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, has cost thousands of people their jobs, and is causing trickle-down damage to many Times Square businesses that depend on theater patrons.

The industry, which was idled on March 12, had initially said it hoped to resume performances on April 13, but a reopening is now expected more likely to be in May or June.

Under the agreement, all unionized employees will be paid for the week that was cut short by the shutdown, and the next two weeks.

Army Corps may convert empty New York City hotels into hospitals.

The Army Corps of Engineers has sent service members to tour hotels in New York City to figure out how to convert up to 10,000 vacant rooms into temporary hospital rooms amid the coronavirus outbreak, Army officials said on Friday.

The Corps had not yet decided where the temporary hospitals would be, but General Todd Semonite, the Corps’ commander, said that candidates included empty hotels and the Javits Center on Manhattan’s Far West Side.

Mr. Cuomo wants the Corps to help build temporary hospitals, saying that he believes the state will have a disastrous shortage of hospital beds, particularly intensive-care beds.

General Semonite said that the Corps could turn empty hotels into intensive-care units, and could even convert hotel rooms into “negative pressure” rooms, which would prevent contamination from leaving the room and flowing into surrounding areas.

Crowds throng a new test center in Queens.

Early Friday, about 100 people lined up for coronavirus tests outside the emergency room at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, one of several public hospitals that the city Health Department said on Thursday would begin testing people for the virus by appointment only.

The other public hospitals offering tests as of Friday included Bellevue, Harlem, Metropolitan, Kings County, Lincoln, Woodhull and Queens, officials said. Test centers are expected to open at Coney Island and Jacobi hospitals early next week. The city also plans to open several drive-through test sites at its hospitals.

Officials said they expected to test 150 people a day at each of the centers, which were created to ensure that New Yorkers with moderate to severe symptoms had access to tests without going to emergency rooms.

Those who have mild symptoms, are not over 50 or do not have underlying health conditions should continue to stay home, practice social distancing and consult their health care providers if their symptoms do not subside in three to four days.

New Jersey’s only drive-through test center exceeds capacity on its first day.

Officials in New Jersey said that more than 600 people had been tested by Friday afternoon at the state’s first drive-through testing center, quickly exceeding its capacity and causing anyone not already in line to be turned away.

Governor Murphy said that people who were still hoping to be tested at the site, at Bergen Community College in Paramus, should try again Saturday morning. A second drive-through site, at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, is expected to open on Monday.

“To say there was pent-up demand would be the understatement of the century,” Mr. Murphy said on Friday.

The site was scheduled to close for the day at 4 p.m., and state officials said that only those in line by around 1:50 p.m. would be eligible for testing.

In Connecticut, officials in Darien decided to move the first drive-through testing center proposed for in the town because of “some logistics issues.” The center, which was supposed to open at Darien Town Hall, will instead open on Monday at Darien High School.

Some Darien residents had objected to the Town Hall location.

“Wow, this is maddening,” Luke Bronin, the mayor of Hartford, wrote on Twitter. “Public health needs to come before the convenience of homeowners offended by the location of the temporary test sites.”

The chief executive of a New Jersey hospital at the center of the state’s outbreak tests positive.

Holy Name Medical Center, a midsize community hospital in Teaneck, N.J., has been at the center of an outbreak in Bergen County, which has about a quarter of both the state’s confirmed cases and deaths from the virus.

The hospital has cleared its pediatric wing to make space for people infected with the virus, where 29 people are being held in isolation, and has carved its emergency room in two areas, creating a modified coronavirus wing.

On Friday, its chief executive, Mike Maron, said he had tested positive for the virus and was recovering at home.

“As soon as I began developing symptoms, I self-quarantined and was tested,” Mr. Maron said.

Holy Name has tested 453 people for the coronavirus in tents set up outside its emergency room and the hospital has treated 83 patients who tested positive.

Most buses in New York City will effectively be free as of Monday.

All local and select bus services in New York City will effectively be free starting on Monday as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees the subway and buses, works to keep its operations going while also protecting employees.

The authority is asking riders to begin boarding buses through the rear door, which will allow for more space between riders and drivers at the front of buses, the agency said in a statement.

The changes do not apply to authority’s express bus lines. Riders must still those buses from the front and pay, although they will not be allowed in the first three rows of seats.

“Rear-door boarding will help ensure a safe social distance,” said Sarah Feinberg, New York City Transit’s interim president. “The safety of our employees and customers is Priority One.”

Reporting was contributed by Helene Cooper, Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura, Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Michael Gold, Christina Goldbaum, Joseph Goldstein, J. David Goodman, Matthew Haag, Jeffery C. Mays, Jesse McKinley, Andy Newman, Azi Paybarah, Michael Paulson, Brian Rosenthal, Ed Shanahan, Jeffrey E. Singer, Liam Stack, Tracey Tully and Neil Vigdor.