Mr. Cuomo appeared to acknowledge the pressure. “The decision each of makes now will impact us all tomorrow,” he wrote on Twitter. “STAY HOME.”
Puerto Rico’s governor, Wanda Vázquez, ordered those on the island to stay indoors from 9 p.m. until 5 a.m. from Sunday night until at least March 30, saying that residents had failed to comply with requests to observe social distancing. She also ordered all businesses to close except for supermarkets, pharmacies, gas stations and banks.
And Maryland’s governor ordered casinos, racetracks and betting facilities to close “indefinitely.”
In the Omaha, Neb., area, officials reported the first known instance of community spread. In Illinois, a nursing facility where a woman tested positive for the virus was placed on lockdown. And in Pittsburgh, where the first local cases were announced on Saturday, city leaders urged bars to promote social distancing by limiting the number of people they allowed inside.
Two American emergency-room doctors — one in Washington State and one in New Jersey — were in critical condition with Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, the American College of Emergency Physicians said on Saturday. Dr. William Jaquis, the organization’s president, said it was unclear whether the doctor in Washington, who is in his 40s, had contracted the virus at the hospital. The physician in Paterson, N.J., who is 70, had been leading his hospital’s emergency preparedness.
Georgia said on Saturday that it would push back its presidential primary, originally scheduled for March 24, until May 19 — becoming the second U.S. state to delay voting in response to the outbreak. Officials in the next four states scheduled to vote in the primary — Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio — have indicated that they intend to hold their elections on Tuesday as planned.
Authorities in Texas began preparing judges for the possibility that they may have to be ready to order the quarantine of coronavirus patients who refuse to isolate themselves.
And in some areas, officials were making provisions to house and isolate large numbers of people with the virus. But when officials in Washington State chose two locations to house people exposed to the virus, they picked poorer neighborhoods, drawing ire from local officials who noted that their communities had not yet experienced any cases. Dana Ralph, the mayor of Kent, south of Seattle, said residents wondered whether their neighborhoods were being sacrificed to protect wealthier ones.