President Donald Trump signed an unprecedented $2.2 trillion economic rescue package into law on Friday.
Congress passed the legislation this week to support businesses, rush resources to healthcare providers overburdened due to the coronavirus crisis and help struggling families during the deepening epidemic.
“This will deliver urgently needed relief,” Trump said as he signed the bill in the Oval Office, flanked only by Republican lawmakers. He thanked members of both parties for putting Americans “first.”
“This is a very important day outside the single biggest economic relief package in American history and I must say and or any other package by the way.
“It’s twice as large as any relief ever signed and it’s $2.2billion but it actually goes up to $6.2 potentially billion dollars, trillion dollars.
“So you’re talking about a $6.2 trillion bill, nothing like that and this will deliver urgently needed relief to our nations’ families, workers and businesses.”
New York’s hospitals are now on the front line of this coronavirus war – with 400 dead in this state alone and well over a thousand patients in intensive care.
But as New Yorkers queue up hoping to be tested, most worrying is the projection that the United States is still several weeks from the peak of the pandemic – suggesting that the health care system is almost certain to be overwhelmed.
On Friday, ITV News Washington Correspondent Robert Moore spoke to intensive care nurse Michelle Gonzalez, who says that many on the wards are running short on personal protective equipment (PPE) and that patients are dying without being able to be with their closest family.
Most worryingly, she describes herself and her colleagues as conducting “war-time medicine.”
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