And dr. Is in dire need of more facemasks. Some governments leave they can prevent the spread of coronavirus but the World Health Organization says there is little evidence. And more misery for german soccer fans. The football clubs agreed to extend the b bundesliga extensin until the end of maple april. Could it resume in may with empty stadiums . Im brent goff. To our viewers on pbs in the United States and all around the world, welcome. Today across spain, people pause for one minute to mourn and remember the lives lost to the coronavirus. The countrys death toll is the second highest in europe hide only italy. The number of sick needing care and spain is growing, pushing the countrys Health Care System to its limits. And yet the government says there is now reason for cautious hope. Reporter a minute of silence in madrid after the deadliest day yet in spains coronavirus outbreak. The city and much of the country are on lockdown, following other european nations. A Senior Health official who has been infected appeared via video link t to praise measures takeno far, but with a warning. Ananalysis from last week in certrtain regegions shows that e measures by little b by litte are havingng the desirired effe. Very i important measusures were rolled out on ththe 15th of mar. But we cannot t institute morere measures if ththe present ones e having a an effect. This is not the race to the top. Reporter meanwhile, with many medical facilities strained to the breaking point, incoming patients are being treated in makeshift hospitals like this one in madrids convention center, which just opened up a new center on monday. As the death toll spikes, the leader of spains Main Business association complained about the effectct of stayathohome ord. Industry cannot stop. We have e to try to o not stop. And if i it has to stop, it shod be for the minimum time possible. Because industry gives strength to the spanish economy. Industst must be treated with special care because it generates employment and services. It is a very important issue. Reporter that, it clearly is. Soldiers in hazmat suits have been called out, as the battle against the deadly virus grinds on. Brent earlier we spoke to dw correspondent and asked how spaniards are dealing with a crisis. Reporter the s situation iss becoming increasingly intense. It is the fourth day in a row w with morore than 800 p people dyining every day. So, the p people are worried. When i g go to the supermarket,i see a lot of w worried facaces. On the other hand o officials ty to be e optimistic and say t the peak might be reached in the coming days. But what makes it especially difficult forr families is t the economicic u uertainty, because they do not know if they will lose their j jobs mamaybe in the next w weeks. And are studies that up to 50 of the people in spain are afraid to lose their jobs. Brent across the atlantic in the United States, the death toll the coronavirus has surpassed 3500, more than chinas official tally. New york is the nations deadliest hotspot with about 1550 deaths statewide, most of them in new york city. It is trying to rampp up its capacity before cases hit their peak. That includes a u. S. Navy hospital ship that is now docked in the harbor and able to take up to 1000 patients. For more im joined by an Infectious Disease specialist and cohost of the epidemic podcast on the c coronavirus pandemic. It is good to have you on the show. You work at bellevue hospital. Tell me, what is the situation there righ n now . Guest t so, doctors working at bellevue a as well as many other hospitals acrossss the new york state area are reaeally short. We have a very serious shohortae of p personal protectiveve equipment. Most of us are operating without the appropriate n95 respirator masks, even susurgical masks and fafacemasks, face shields, gown, are in short supply. That means not only can we not protect ourselves appropriately against infection, but it means that if we do have patients who are in the hospital, the few who remain in the hospital who do not have covid19, it puts us at risk for also infecting them with this virus. So it is really quite a concerning situation. Brent there have been shocking statistics and images coming out of new york. One new York Resident died every 12 minutes from the coronavirus over the weekend according to the citys health department. Theres now a Field Hospital set up in central park. What message should these images be sending to the world outside of the United States . Guest well, i hope people will learn from the mistakes o of new yoyork city and fofor that mattr ththe mistakes of wuhan and itay and so on. I think unfortunately what we are s seeing agagain and again s until people see this in their own backyard, they are not taking the appropriate measures, they are not being aggressive enough, and i think that is really unfortunate because too many people are going to d die s a result of that. Brent and we know that there are lots of spepecialists, well trained specialiststs in the u. You arare one of them, you workd in west africa the ebola crisis. Are there any lessons from there that are u useful for you today . Guest i think to me what is most analogous are the conspiracy theories, the idea at the time that ebola was a hoax. We heard similar things here in the u. S. Ththat coronavirus wasa hoax. And there was a lot of messaging done that convinced people that this was real, this was somemething ththey had to take seririously. And ununrtunately in both cases, these were epidemimics, panandes that were unfolding in the midit of president ial campaigns. So the messaging very y much got politicicized. And i just haveve to say, i thik we really neeeed to focus o on e science e and do what makess us from a Public Health perspective. So that means the messaging needs to comomfrom scienentists, not politicians. Brent are you saying that it has been politicized in the United States . We have a Daily Press Briefing from the white house now. What is yoyour opinion on that . Guest again, i think those need to be led d by the scientists wo are really spearheading the respsponse. I think the problemems when yoyu have politicians whoho a doioing the messasaging, people will decide whether they believe the message were not based on whether they like the politician or not. So even if what they are saying is true, it muddies the message. So whether it is dr. Fauci or dr. Birx, one of ththose leading scientists should really be the ones who are doing the messaging, not politicians, really on either side of t the slsle. Brent doctor, we listen to your podcast epidemic, as s often ase can. An excellent piece of work. Thank you. As coronavirus cases continue to climb in the u. S. , pressure is growing on socalled essential workers to continue to sell groceries and to make home deliveries. Some workers have gone on strike. Workers at the ecommerce giant amazon walked out of their warehouse in new york city over fears t that theyey are not b bg protecected from the virus. There werere also natationwide stoppageges a at the amazonowod supermarket chchn whwhole foods, as well as Grocery Delivery Service e instacacart. Employees say the increased workload has put them at risk, and the companies are not doing enough to protect them. My colleague is here and he has been following this story for us. Why do these workers feel unsafe . Reporter they are continuing to go to work while the rest of us, present company excluded, are staying at home quarantining, ordering things on amazon and groceries from apps like instacart. So they still have to go out and be in contact with people who possibly have the virus. The amazon warehouse, the workers went on strike in Staten Island are new york city specifically because one of their colleagues came down with the virus, was sent home, but there was not transparency in how they were communicated. They demanded amazon shut down the warehouse and let everybody go home. And at whole foods and instacart, their worries is that they are being exposed to the virus and their pay is not reflecting that, and that if they want to go home and get away from the area, they will have to take a pay cut for that. Lets take a look at what the instacart workers had to say about the situation. I just feared that the companies that are allowowing these e things to go on and basicacally capitalizing off of this pandemic, are not going to have myy back when something gos wrong, or if it does go wrong. Brent we have to say, these people, they are working overtime now, especially in this crisis. What do these workers want their companies to do . Amien they are not saying do not want to work anymore, necessarily, but they want hazard pay to reflect this. At whole foods, which went on strike, they were saying that it is akin to being in a danger zone, so they want double pay to go to work during this crisis. And at instacart they want a higher tip base rate so that when somebody orders groceries, instead of a 5 tip they would get 10 . So differences in pay. They also want the ability to selfquarantine if they feel they have been exposed to the virus, which is not a privilege a lot of them get. At amazon they wanted to shut down the warehouse. And actually the person who organized the strike was immediately fired afterwards. This has caused a lot of commotion. Even new york mayor bill de blasio has spoken out about this. Brent people depend on especially amazon more than ever right now. So you would think that the workers would have more leverage. How effective have the strikes been so far . Amien there is no evidence that they have been effective as strikes, because they have not really been able to shut down production, probably because of the low number of people who are actually participating in the strikes, but also because these companies are massively expanding. Amazon is hiring hundreds of thousands of workers to put up with the increase in demand, as is instacart. But it has been a good bliss of the campaign. So good publicity campaign. Bernie sanders for example, he said these are some of the most important workers in america right now, and pay should reflect that. You also have alexandria ocasiocortez speak out, joe biden, who is the front runner in the democratic primaries right now. You also had Elizabeth Warren speak out about this. So there is a lot of solidarity coming from people, also bill de blasio. On that front i think people are looking at these workers used to be considered low skilled workers as essential workers, people getting us food. Brent they are the lifeline to the outside world for a lot of us. Thank you. Some very ugly numbers from wall street. U. S. Stocks have wrapped up their worst single quarter since the Great Recession in 2008. The s p 500 index lost a whopping 20 between january and march. The Dow Jones Industrial average fell 22 , its biggest quarterly loss since 1987. Europe and asia set similar records. Investors have sold off assets at record pace, as Economic Activity around the world has ground to a halt due to, you guessed it, the pandemic. Lets go now to our financial correspondent jens korte in new york. Good afternoon to you, jens. We are finishing a bad First Quarter, and the Second Quarter is looking worse. Is there any good news for businesses looking ahead . Jens theres always hope, right . And companies try t to get creative. Sosome local distilleries for example, they are now producing hand sanitizers. Ford is supposed to deliver 100,000 ventilators by july 4. If you look at the Second Quarter in general, we all know the numbers, espepecially for april, will be pretty bad. But theres hope that things might be improving. After that theres talk about an infrastructure plan from the white house. There could be support also from congress. We are talking about an additional 2 trillion to get the economy going oncnce we can handle the Health Issues a bit better. So that is basically what people are hoping for on wall street and in the Business Community overall. Brent and since we are talking about records, oil prices are near record lows. You would think that that would be good for everybody, but it is also disruptive. Tell me about that. Jens it t clearly is. Oil prices here in the u. S. , west texas intermediate dropped about 65 in the First Quarter. We have never seen anything like that before. And if you look at the global picture, you have a lot of oilproducing nations who really depend on oil and a higher oil price. If youou look at compapanies lie russia, not even to talk about countries like venezuela. So that will have a devastating effect also here in the United States. The oil industry really exploded in the past couple of years. For some time thehe u. S. Was the Biggest Oil Producer on the planet. On the other side we have the cheaper oil, cheaper gasoline prices, but that does not really help right now, as nobody is moving and nobody is driving. So that is having clearly an effect, the lower oil prices. Brent we are ending the First Quarter complete lead different than the way we started. It will be interesting to see the way we end the Second Quarter. Jens, as always, thank you. Are you wearing a facemask . Despite doubts about their effectiveness, there seems to be a surge towards Wearing Masks here in europe. President macron wants french factories to produce 10 million a week. Reporter facemasks. For years they have been part of daily life for many and asia. And now for parts of europe, they are about to come so, too. Austrias decision to make it necessary to wear in supermarkets has sparked debate in neighboring germany. This town has become the first to announce similar measures, though given the shortage of facemasks, the city has encouraged people to sew their own. It is a move largely welcomed by their residents. I think it is good. The more that is done, the better. And the more everyone does it, the sooner we will be free of the virus. I have six masks at home and if push comes to shove i will sew my own. I think it is a good idea in principle. The problem is there are simply no masks. Reporter the world is among those saying theres little Scientific Evidence showing that basic masks, ones not intended for medical use, effectively prevent Healthy People from catching the coronavirus. But some experts advise they could be useful as a barrier to stop those infected from contaminating others. Masaks masks for nose and mouth keep the droplets from flying out when someone sneezes or coughs. Reporter up to now, the insistence by many western countries not the widespread use of masks is not necessary has surprised many in asia. There, people have worn facemasks for years because of air pollution. But in this pandemic, they are practically a civic duty. In europe, that attitude is now increasingly gaining ground. Brent now, more money. Small Business Owners in the selfemployed here in germany have been among the hardest hit by the coronavirus shut down. It helped does not come quickly, many will go under. So the federal government and the german states have launched a variety of rescue packages. But will they be enough to save everyone . Take a look. Reporter like many other small Business Owners, he is facing a host of problems. Meeting payroll and paying rent, and other expenses like the spring collection, which costs 20,000 euros. This area here had a kind of expiration date. Depending on the weathther, probably may. If we do not reopen before then, we will have a real problem. Reporter he is receiving 9000 euros in Emergency Support from the state. That will help,p, at least for e moment. It is not enough. If we do not make Additional Support available, in six or eight weeks we will see the first bankruptcies. Reporter the clock is ticking. He owns a hair salon in berlin. Soon after a loan program went online, the funds were tapped out. I was one minute too late. The website shut down at 11 00 p. M. And reopened at 6 00 the next morning. And this is what i saw. I almost made it. I almost got financial support. Now its too late. Reporter berlin has said it will replenish the pot, but it is already becoming clear that rescuing all the countrys small Business Owners and the selfemployed would cost far more than initially expected. Brent h here i is a look now at someme of thotheher stories that are making headlines around the world. South africa has the most confirmed coronavirus cases in africa, but it is struggling to make its citizens obey social distancing rules. The government has announced mass doortodoor screening and testing for infections. Moroccos capital has been hardhit by a coronavirus quarantine that hahas seen the citys famous suits shut down only complete. Only fruit stands and bakeries can operate. In japan, a surge in Coronavirus Infections in tokyo is putting the government under pressure to declare a nationwide lockdown. 2000 cases have so far been confirmed throughout japan. Many employees are already working from home, and that is quite a Novel Concept in the land of the socalled salary man. The worker drone who is chained to his desk. Reporter casually dressed as his daughters play nearby, his Work Environment is far removed from a typical japanese salary man. The officee workers are expected to spend long hours at their desks, but the coronavirus outbreak has forcecethem too telework from home. It is getting a cautious thumbsup. What is good about teleworking is i can have more free time. I usually spend two hours in total commuting, which i now used to take care of things at home. That i like very much. Reporter the government wants to encourage more women in the workforce in japan. This requires men to pull their weight on childcare and housework. But while 1 5 of Companies Offer a telework option, just 8. 5 of employees have tried it out. Experts say it may lead to a more permanent change, and it is not just the Office Workers themselves who welcome the change. The kids like it, too. Brent the German Football League has confirmed that the restart date for the bundesliga will be april 30 at the earliest. Germanys toptier league has been suspended since march 13. The clubs agreed on tuesday that the suspension should be extended because of the coronavirus. However, games may still be played behind closed doors when the season resumes. There are nine rounds of matches left in the current league. Joining us now is the sporting director of bundesliga dusseldorf. It is good to have you on the program. The dfl wants to finish this season in full. Do you thihink that isis a wise decisision . Guest i thinknk its an importt decision. I also believe it is a wise dedesion, as long as we can guarantee e the safetyty of the playerers. Their healthth must always be te mostst important part. T. But lets say they are and a good state and we can play games behihind closed doors, i thinknt is a good thing for the football clubs, also for the economic side to try to finish the season. Brent what about for the country and the fans . If the pandemic is still raging across germany and europe, what will it look like to have bundesliga Football Players playing matches while people are dying outside of thehe virus . Guesest i i think youavave to k at it in a bit o of a different way. It is very darkrk times, no dout about it. But i thihink if people are at home, they do not hahave much to do, yeah, i belieieve it can be officialal b be a s special g for them to hahave the b bundesa back and to wawatch the players. Asasong as we e have a guarantee with the taskk force, the dfl, which is lots of doctors also, i believe it is a good thing because it is good for the emotion of people. Brent we heard the dfls chief executives say some clubs could have their existence threatened by this suspension. Is that true for dusseldldorf . Lutz i thinknk our case e is slightly different. I mean, we are a a smaller clulb with a smaller budget. Our finances are h healthy. Obviouslsly we e are n not a rib with a huge b budget. But overarall if you do n not py football foror a longer time, as long a as the nongame time goes on, the more difficucult it is r all the clclubs in the e first d ththe second divivision. Forr now, i think we will be ok. But t every club has their own measuremenents. Not getting t the full salary ad thin likike that. T. You u have dififferent m measurs to a actually try to save some money. But of course it is a difficult time for every club in the league. Brent are you concerned if the fit if the season is finished behind closed doors, how can clubs guarantee the safety of their players . Lutz that was one of the topics totoday. Ifif there i is a health h dangn i am 100 convinced t they wille no games. Today y when we spoke, it was clearly said therere will be a task force with very wellknown specialistss w who really lolooo ththe dangers and looook into ht can be done so there is no danger for the players, but also for the peoeople who will still work in thth stadiums, like broadcasters and s stuff like that. One of the m measurements is to keep t the number of people in d araround the stadium as low as possible. And they have a clear plan of measurements and action. I think if all that will be done in t the properr way, we have a realistic chance to actually start the season in early may and finished by the end of june. Brent all right. Lutz joining us tonight i think from inside his car. This is a dedicated man. Thank you. You are watching dw news. After a short break i will be back to take you through the day. Stick around for that. Well be right back. [captioning perfrformed by the nanational captitioning institi, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] four hundred and ninety nine new coronavirus deaths in france the wororst day since the Health Crisis began medical staff and the structure continued to struggle with the crisis as it picksks up the dog. The vote. I spike in fatalities reverses hopeful projections by spanish authorities that the country was reaching the peak of the pandemic this as the government approves a new seven hundred million aid package by. And no i did states has overtaken chinas official death toll with the pandemic continuing to. I thought. Doeses ththe