WASHINGTON (Fox News): As the coronavirus outbreak continued to disrupt American life, numerous actions have been taken – in Washington, in state capitals and at the local level — to help get a grip on a situation that simultaneously threatened to spin out of control.
In Washington, President Trump said Wednesday he would invoke the Defense Production Act, a move designed to help private businesses ramp up production and distribution of medical supplies and equipment needed to combat the virus also known as COVID-19.
“If we need to use it we’ll be using it,” the president said. “It’s full speed ahead.”
On a day that saw confirmed U.S. cases of the virus surpass 9,300 and deaths top 130, Trump also signed a second coronavirus relief bill that called for providing paid sick leave, unemployment aid and free testing to the public.
Trump and members of Congress also were considering providing as much as $300 billion to the airline industry and other distressed businesses.
Total projected government expenditures as high as $1 trillion – including proposed checks paid directly to the public — seemed contrary to everything the Republican Party normally preaches about fiscal responsibility – but these were unusual circumstances, some party members noted.
“These are not ordinary times. This is not an ordinary situation,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters Tuesday, according to Politico. “So it requires extraordinary measures.”
And just a week after the president announced new restrictions on travel between the U.S. and Europe, Trump said the U.S. and Canada would temporarily close their shared border to non-essential traffic.
Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said they would focus only on the most critical cases in a bid to avoid bringing the virus inside the agency’s detention centers for illegal immigrants.
New York and California, two states among those hardest hit by the outbreak, were anticipating the arrival of hospital ships from the U.S. military in order to expand the number of available beds for people stricken with the virus.
The USNS Mercy hospital ship, based on the West Coast, was expected to be deployed “in days,” military officials told the AP, while the USNS Comfort, undergoing maintenance in Norfolk, Va., was expected in New York City within two weeks.
In addition, the Defense Department made 1 million respiratory masks available to the Department of Health and Human Services and planned to provide 4 million more, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Wednesday.
Other examples of military assistance included the deployment of 23,000 National Guard members in 23 states to assist at emergency operations centers, provide transportation to health care providers and collect and deliver test samples.
If matters worsen, military personnel can provide a range of services from “mass casualty” medical treatment to postal delivery and water and sewer services, the Defense Department said.
