Coronavirus: Every US state now deemed a disaster zone in need of aid

Every US state is in an official state of disaster for the first time in history as the country’s death toll became the world’s highest.

A shipment of personal protective equipment from Shanghai is unloaded at Manchester-Boston Regional Airport on Sunday. Picture: AP

Every US state is in an official state of disaster for the first time in history as the country’s death toll from the coronavirus became the world’s highest.

Wyoming, the least populous state, became the last to get a federal disaster declaration from President Trump Donald at the weekend after it reached 200 cases.

The declarations make federal funding available to state and local governments to combat the virus and make it easier for them to draw on resources such as the army corps of engineers.

Washington DC, which has a unique status; the US Virgin Islands; the Northern Mariana Islands; Puerto Rico; and Guam have also received disaster declarations, making American Samoa the only US territory that has not.

On Sunday, the US death toll from the virus surpassed that of Italy, becoming the highest number of any country. As of Monday, there had been 21,409 deaths from the virus in the US.

As the states attempt to slow the virus’s spread and minimise deaths, they are competing with each other, and the federal government, in a cut-throat global market for medical supplies.

State governors are cutting unorthodox deals directly with companies in an attempt to beat their competitors — and compatriots — to precious hauls of masks and other protective equipment.

States are paying ballooning prices for scarce resources, and abandoning rules about how to spend taxpayers’ money, for example by offering full funds up front to sweeten the deal.

Officials in one state told The Washington Post that they were preparing to dispatch police to greet two chartered cargo planes bearing millions of masks from China next week, for fear that the federal government would swoop in. The officials asked the newspaper not to identify their state so the government was not alerted.

“We’re doing what everyone else is doing,” Mike DeWine, the Republican governor of Ohio, said. “You’ve got 50 states and the federal government all chasing the same companies. It’s crazy.”

Laura Kelly, the Democratic governor of Kansas, said: “We all know how the free market works. It goes to the highest bidder. I can’t put in a bid for masks or ventilators or face shields that will rival what colleagues in New York can do.”

Mr Trump announced social-distancing measures in mid-March but reports at the weekend said he had been urged by senior officials to put strong restrictions in place throughout February.

“Obviously if we had, right from the very beginning, shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different,” Anthony Fauci, the White House’s top infectious diseases expert, told CNN on Monday AEST. “But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then … We make a recommendation. Often, the recommendation is taken. Sometimes, it’s not. It is what it is. We are where we are right now.”

According to The New York Times, several administration officials including Vice-President Mike Pence, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law, tried to impress the seriousness of the crisis and the necessity of strong action on Mr Trump. It was eventually Deborah Birx, a world-leading HIV researcher seconded to the coronavirus taskforce, who won the President round.

The President “often told people he thought she was elegant,” the newspaper reported.

Mr Trump on Monday rejected criticism of his response to the corona­virus threat, retweeting a call from a former Republican congressional candidate to fire Dr Fauci. He also lashed out on Twitter at what he called the “fake news” Democrats and media.

He tweeted: “If the Fake News Opposition Party is pushing, with all their might, the fact that President Trump ‘ignored early warnings about the threat,’ then why did Media & Dems viciously criticize me when I instituted a Travel Ban on China? They said ‘early & not necessary.’ Corrupt Media!”

Last week, Mr Trump levelled criticism at the World Health Organisation and threatened to reduce its funding. “The WHO really blew it,” he said in a tweet, noting that the US was a major funder of the organisation.

The Times, DPA