New Illness in N.Y. Children May Be Linked to Virus: Live Updates

Many of the children, ages 2 to 15, have shown symptoms associated with toxic shock or Kawasaki disease, a rare illness in children that involves inflammation of the blood vessels, including coronary arteries, the city’s health department said.

None of the New York City patients with the syndrome have died, according to a bulletin from the health department, which describes the illness as a “multisystem inflammatory syndrome potentially associated with Covid-19.”

The syndrome has received growing attention in recent weeks as similar cases have begun appearing in European countries hit hard by the coronavirus, including the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Spain.

New York City’s health commissioner, Oxiris Barbot, said in a statement: “Even though the relationship of this syndrome to Covid-19 is not yet defined, and not all of these cases have tested positive for Covid-19 by either DNA test or serology, the clinical nature of this virus is such that we are asking all providers to contact us immediately if they see patients who meet the criteria we’ve outlined.”

She urged parents to contact a doctor immediately “if your child has symptoms like fever, rash, abdominal pain or vomiting.”

In an interview with The New York Post published Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump said that it would be “not fair to the Republicans” to give large infusions of aid to states with Democratic governors “that have been mismanaged over a long period of time.”

“You look at Illinois, you look at New York, look at California, you know, those three, there’s tremendous debt there, and many others,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Trump’s comments and Mr. de Blasio’s rejoinders were the latest installment in an ongoing verbal battle between national Republican leaders, including the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, and state and local Democratic officials over the question of federal aid.

Even as he railed against the president, Mr. de Blasio announced that with the help of federal health authorities, the city would begin offering antibody testing to health care workers and first responders, with a goal of testing 140,000 people.

At 1 a.m. on Wednesday, the New York City subway will do something it has not done on a regular basis in at least 50 years.

There have not been many overnight commuters lately in any case. Ridership on the subway is down more than 90 percent, with orders having been issued by the governor in March for people not to use mass transit unless it is absolutely necessary.

Only about 11,000 people per night have been using the subway from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. in recent weeks.

A few days a week, a woman arrives at the Metropolitan Plant and Flower Exchange — a squat, lime-green bunker along Route 17 North in Paramus, N.J. They know her there by her hospital scrubs.

She picks up her standing order: yellow daffodils. If there aren’t any daffodils, she’ll take carnations — yellow, please. That’s the most important part — bright yellow.

She brings the flowers with her to work at Hackensack University Medical Center. They aren’t for her office. They’re not for co-workers or patients. She carries them out back and walks into a parking garage.

Her name is Tanisha Brunson-Malone, 41, a forensic technician at the hospital’s morgue. She performs autopsies and oversees funeral home pickups of patients who have died.

Up two short flights of stairs to a closed-off floor. Where there would normally be parked cars, there are now three long trailers, with loud motors powering their refrigerators.

Inside each trailer are bodies in body bags, stacked on shelves three high, coronavirus victims awaiting pickup.

Ms. Brunson-Malone enters each trailer and walks the aisle between the rows, pausing at each new body bag. There, she carefully places a flower on top.

“One or two, it depends on how many flowers I have,” she said. “Sometimes I run out. I’ll go after work to go pick up more flowers. I know in the morning I’ll need more.”

“If upstate has to wait for downstate to be ready,” Mr. Cuomo said, “they’re going to be waiting for a long time.”

“I had hoped that we could get back to a sense of normal by allowing our children to get back to the schools they love and to be with their friends and classmates,” the governor said at his daily briefing after making the announcement. “But the reality is that we cannot safely reopen our schools.”

Mr. Murphy’s decision came after New York and Pennsylvania took similar steps. He had repeatedly indicated a preference for schools to reopen, a position shared by President Trump but not by most of his fellow governors.

The announcement about schools staying closed came on a day that New Jersey announced 45 new virus-related deaths for a total of 7,910 fatalities. Because of a weekend failure of the state’s computer system, both numbers are below the true figures, officials said.

“We are certain that these numbers are underreported,” the health commissioner, Judith M. Persichilli said.

As The New York Times follows the spread of the coronavirus across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, we need your help. We want to talk to doctors, nurses, lab technicians, respiratory therapists, emergency services workers, nursing home managers — anyone who can share what’s happening in the region’s hospitals and other health care centers.

A reporter or editor may contact you. Your information will not be published without your consent.

Reporting was contributed by Jonah Engel Bromwich, Joseph Goldstein, Jesse McKinley, Andy Newman, Elian Peltier, Sarah Nir, Matt Stevens, Tracey Tully and Michael Wilson.