Reuters US Domestic News Summary
Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs.
On Oklahoma plains, an island of near normality in a pandemic
On red cobbled Main Street in Guymon, the biggest town in Oklahoma's panhandle, Jesus Ruiz gives "high and tight" hair cuts as a red, white and blue barber's pole turns lazily outside. About half the customers in the barber shop work at the busy pork processing plant in Guymon, a majority Hispanic/Latino community which rises like an island in a sea of corn and grass. Ruiz hopes this remoteness protects it from the coronavirus encroaching on all sides.
With eye on election, Trump in high-stakes balancing act over coronavirus response
By Jarrett Renshaw and James Oliphant WASHINGTON, March 28 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump offered a preview of his re-election campaign playbook last year when he visited the building site of a multi-billion-dollar cracking unit in western Pennsylvania, hailed as one of the largest construction projects in the country.
At some U.S. hospitals, drugs, catheters, oxygen tanks run low
It's not just protective facemasks that are in short supply: health workers in U.S. hospitals are reporting dwindling stocks of drugs, catheters and other medical miscellany vital for caring for a surge in patients stricken by the coronavirus outbreak. Marney Gruber, a doctor who works in emergency rooms around New York City, said a number of commonly used medications are in short supply, and at least one hospital had run out of central line kits, which are used to administer drugs to patients in intensive care.
U.S. ventilator makers pull out all stops to fight coronavirus
As U.S. demand for ventilators skyrockets during the coronavirus pandemic, smaller medical device makers are simplifying their designs and pushing other work aside to make more of the devices. The United States had equipment to help patients breathe when they can no longer do so on their own to about 160,000 people, according to research compiled by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health and Security.
New Yorkers irked to feel unwelcome in states fearing coronavirus spread
Many New Yorkers say they are miffed at being treated as the poster children of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak, unwelcome in some states even if they are symptom-free. This week, Rhode Island, Florida and West Virginia appeared to roll up the welcome mats to residents of the Empire State.
As virus threatens, U.S. embraces big government, for now
It may, as House Majority Leader and Maryland Democrat Steny Hoyer said on Friday, be out of love that the United States agreed to shut down much of its economy to stop a viral epidemic and save lives. It may, as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said, be out of necessity that the federal government agreed to foot the bill.
Coronavirus outbreak is stretching New York's ambulance service to breaking point
By Scot Paltrow The coronavirus outbreak sweeping through New York City has pushed its ambulance service close to the breaking point, with hundreds of personnel out ill and emergency calls skyrocketing, supervisors and rank-and-file emergency medical technicians said on Friday.
Pentagon eyes Chicago, Michigan, Florida, Louisiana as coronavirus spreads
The U.S. military is watching coronavirus infection trends in Chicago, Michigan, Florida and Louisiana with concern as it weighs where else it may need to deploy, after boosting aid to New York, California and Washington, a top general said on Friday. Air Force General John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the military was doing its own analysis as well as looking at data on infections compiled elsewhere in the government.
America's civil rights leader Joseph Lowery dies, aged 98
The Reverend Joseph Lowery, a key ally of Martin Luther King in the U.S. civil rights movement of the 1960s, died late on Friday at the age of 98, his family said in a statement. "Our beloved, Rev. Dr. Joseph Echols Lowery, made his transition peacefully at home at 10 p.m., Friday, March 27, at the age of 98. He was surrounded by his daughters," Lowery's family said.
As U.S. virus cases exceed 100,000, doctors decry scarcity of drugs and equipment
The sum of known coronavirus U.S. cases soared well past 100,000, with more than 1,600 dead, as weary doctors and nurses coping with shortages resorted to extremes ranging from hiding scarce medical supplies to buying them on the black market. American healthcare workers in the trenches of the pandemic appealed on Friday for more protective gear and equipment to treat a surge in patients that is already pushing hospitals to their limits in virus hot spots such as New York City, New Orleans and Detroit.
