Trump signs emergency coronavirus-aid package

President Donald Trump signed a multibillion-dollar emergency aid package on Wednesday that includes free coronavirus testing and paid emergency leave for furloughed workers as the spread of the coronavirus threatens to derail the labor market.

The measure, which the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates will cost $104 billion, is the second package that Congress has passed amid growing concerns about the widespread coronavirus that already has bludgeoned the economy.

The package passed the Senate by a vote of 90-8 after the majority leader, Mitch McConnell, urged conservatives who disapproved of it to "gag and vote for it anyway".

"This is a time for urgent bipartisan action, and in this case, I do not believe we should let perfection be the enemy of something that will help even a subset of workers," McConnell said on the Senate floor Wednesday morning.

Also Wednesday, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, a Florida Republican, said he has tested positive for the coronavirus, becoming the first member of Congress known to have contracted the virus.

Later Wednesday, Representative Ben McAdams, a freshman Democrat from Utah, said he had tested positive for coronavirus.

White House officials, led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, are working with congressional Republicans on a $1 trillion emergency stimulus package.

Media reports on Wednesday said the Treasury is circulating a two-page sheet of priorities for the package. The proposal reportedly calls for the authority to send two $250 billion rounds of checks directly to American taxpayers, the first on April 6 and the second May 18. Payments would be fixed, and their size dependent on income and family size, the summary said.

"People want to go big," Trump said at a news conference when asked about the size of the direct payments to Americans. "Everybody seems to want to go big, and they want to get to the recovery."

It also includes a $50 billion "airline industry secured lending facility" that would allow it to make direct loans to US passenger and cargo air carriers, and another $150 billion for secured loans or loan guarantees for other parts of the economy hard hit by the financial crisis.

The proposal to increase loans to small businesses would allow any employer with 500 employees or fewer to receive loans equaling six weeks of their payroll up to $1,540 per employee, under the condition that companies must keep paying their employees for eight weeks after receiving the loan.

Marriott International, the world's largest hotel operator, said Tuesday that it would begin furloughing tens of thousands of employees worldwide. In the US, about 130,000 employees are on the Marriott payroll, the company said.

On Tuesday, Hilton Hotels said it would close its New York Hilton Midtown indefinitely starting Friday. It is one of more than a dozen hotels in the city that have announced this week that they will close, either for a while or permanently, industry officials said.

One of the last big events at the Hilton was a conference of emergency-room doctors that ended March 11. Seven doctors who attended the conference, out of 1,300 people who were there, have since tested positive for the coronavirus, according to the medical association that organized the event.

More than 7,500 Americans have been infected with the coronavirus. There have been 55 deaths in the US as of early Wednesday evening, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The global rate of confirmed cases stood at 214,894; there were 8,732 deaths and 83,313 recoveries, according to the data.

Trump moved to invoke a law allowing the federal government to order American industry to produce critically needed medical equipment, such as ventilators, respirators and other protective gear for health care workers.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday that 2,382 people in the state had tested positive for the coronavirus, an increase of more than 800 since Tuesday. In New York City, 1,871 people had tested positive, compared with 814 on Tuesday.

Cuomo attributed much of the jump to an increase in testing. Of the 14,597 people to be tested so far, nearly 5,000 were tested on Tuesday.

Cuomo also issued a statewide order that no business have more than half its employees leave their homes to come to work.

Cuomo also said on Wednesday that the president had agreed to dispatch a 1,000-bed hospital ship to New York Harbor immediately, but Jonathan Hoffman, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters at a news conference on Wednesday that the vessel was undergoing repairs in Norfolk, Virginia, and that it would be weeks before it sailed for New York.

The governor's office later said the ship wasn't expected to arrive until April.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday that he would have a conversation with the governor on the need to enact "shelter in place" measures in the city.

But Cuomo renewed his opposition to such an order. By adopting such a policy, he said Wednesday, "you close down your healthcare system, you close down your food system, you close down your transportation system".

Reuters contributed to this story.