Major U.S. cities shutting down due to coronavirus

Major U.S. cities shutting down due to coronavirus

Bars, restaurants, theaters and schools were shutting down in New York, Los Angeles and other U.S. cities to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

Lisa Bernhard has more.

(SOUND BITE) (ENGLISH) NEW YORK CITY MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO, SAYING: “I'm very, very concerned that we see a rapid spread of this disease.

And it is time to take more dramatic measures.” The city that never sleeps is shutting down over the coronavirus.

New York City will close its bars and restaurants to limit the spread, meaning take-out and delivery only, and the city's mayor Bill de Blasio added nation's largest school system - with over one million students - to the list of those suspending classes.

(SOUND BITE) (ENGLISH) NEW YORK CITY MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO, SAYING: “And so, this is a decision that I have taken with no joy whatsoever, with a lot of pain, honestly, because it's something I could not in a million years have imagined having to do.

But we are dealing with a challenge and a crisis that we have never seen in our lifetimes and is only just begun.” De Blasio said we, “must respond with a wartime mentality.” The state governor Andrew Cuomo on Monday said similar closures would take effect statewide.

On the other side of the country, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti issued similar orders, with any restaurant bar or café selling food only able to do so via delivery or take-out….

And causing massive lines at places like Costco, as panic-buying set in.

Even Starbucks is take-out only nationwide.

Along with New York and Los Angeles, school districts in Chicago and Boston are closed.

These sweeping measures come as the Centers for Disease Control on Sunday recommended that in-person events consisting of 50 people or more throughout the U.S. should not take place for the next eight weeks.

Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday stressed the need for closures despite what he called probably two months of difficulty ahead.

(SOUND BITE) (ENGLISH) FORMER FDA COMMISSIONER DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB, SAYING: “We have a narrow window of opportunity to implement tough measures to try to push down the scope of the epidemic.

What you want to do is you want to put- put in place mitigation steps to reduce the peak number of cases you have to get them below the point at which the health care system gets exhausted.

Because what happened in Wuhan, China, was the health care system got exhausted and fatalities rose quickly.” There are more than 3700 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins University, with about 70 fatalities.