AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT

$2 trillion virus rescue bill hits late snags in Senate

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate leaders raced to unravel last-minute snags Wednesday and win passage of an unparalleled $2 trillion economic rescue package steering aid to businesses, workers and health care systems engulfed by the coronavirus pandemic.

The measure is the largest economic relief bill in history, and both parties' leaders were desperate for quick passage of a bill aimed at a virus that is costing lives and jobs by the hour.

The package is intended as a weekslong or monthslong patch for an economy spiraling into recession or worse and a nation facing a grim toll from an infection that's killed nearly 20,000 people worldwide.

Underscoring the effort's sheer magnitude, the bill finances a response with a price tag that equals half the size of the entire $4 trillion annual federal budget.

"A fight has arrived on our shores," said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. "We did not seek it, we did not want it, but now we're going to win it."

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What you need to know today about the virus outbreak

Senate leaders were rushing to unravel last-minute snags and win passage of unprecedented emergency legislation to rush sweeping aid totaling some $2 trillion to businesses, workers and a health care system slammed by the coronavirus pandemic.

Meanwhile, New York authorities mobilized to head off a potential public health disaster, India's 1.3 billion people joined the global lockdown, and Prince Charles has tested positive for the new coronavirus.

Here are some of AP's top stories Wednesday on the world's coronavirus pandemic. Follow APNews.com/VirusOutbreak for updates through the day and APNews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak for stories explaining some of its complexities.

WHAT'S HAPPENING TODAY:

— A makeshift morgue has been set up outside New York's Bellevue Hospital as authorities mobilize to head off a potential public health disaster. The city’s police, their ranks dwindling as more fall sick, are being told to patrol nearly empty streets to enforce social distancing as city has emerged as the nation’s biggest coronavirus hot spot, and a warning flare for the rest of the country.

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New York mobilizes against onslaught from the virus

NEW YORK (AP) — Just days after New York leaders ordered people to stay home, authorities mobilized to head off a potential public health disaster Wednesday, with the city's emergence as the nation's biggest coronavirus hot spot a warning flare — and perhaps a cautionary tale — for the rest of the country.

A makeshift morgue was set up outside Bellevue Hospital, and the city's police, their ranks dwindling as more fall ill, were told to patrol nearly empty streets to enforce social distancing.

Public health officials hunted down beds and medical equipment and put out a call for more doctors and nurses for fear the number of sick will explode in a matter of weeks, overwhelming hospitals the way the virus did in Italy and Spain. New York University offered to let its medical students graduate early so that they could join the battle.

Worldwide, the death toll climbed past 20,000, according to a running count kept by Johns Hopkins University. The number of dead in the U.S. topped 800, with more than 60,000 infections.

New York State alone accounted for more than 30,000 cases and close to 300 deaths, most of them in New York City.

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Out of medication, US woman boards flight from Peru to US

A 33-year-old American woman running out of her life-saving medication to treat her auto-immune disease finally boarded a flight home Wednesday after being stuck in Peru for about 10 days, but hundreds of other U.S. citizens remained stranded after the South American nation closed its borders due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“I could not be happier,” Anna, who requested that her last name not be made public due to privacy concerns related to her medical condition, said after getting on the plane in Cusco.

At the same time, it was bittersweet. On the way to the airport, Anna and her husband saw a long line of Americans hoping to get on the flight. Her husband told The Associated Press that some people have been “sitting outside the airport for a week.”

“So obviously not everyone on line was getting on this flight,” he said, adding that there were 167 passengers on the LATAM plane, which was organized by the U.S. State Department and allowed to land by Peruvian authorities, unlike previous planes.

The flight from Cusco to Miami with a stop in the Peruvian capital of Lima was the culmination of more than a week of desperately trying to get out of South American nation. The couple had tried to charter a plane to leave Cusco, nestled high in the Andes near the ancient ruins of Machu Picchu, but the Peruvian government refused to give it permission to land. And when they asked the State Department for help, they said they were told the agency was working on the situation.

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'The whole city laid off': US jobless claims climb sky high

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Barely a week ago, David McGraw was cooking daily for hundreds of fine diners at one of New Orleans’ illustrious restaurants.

Today, he’s cooking for himself, at home — laid off along with hundreds of thousands of people across the U.S. in a massive economic upheaval spurred by efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

U.S. Department of Labor figures to be released Thursday are expected to shatter the old record for the greatest number of new unemployment claims filed in a single week. There are more suddenly jobless Americans than during the Great Recession — and more than in the aftermath of major natural disasters such as hurricanes, fires and floods.

But McGraw, and others like him, don’t need official numbers to understand the new realities of life in one of the nation’s hot spots for the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease.

“The whole city, laid off. Everybody,” said McGraw, using an exaggeration that didn’t seem like much of one. "Everybody who worked at a restaurant is laid off.”

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Rural America watches pandemic erupt in cities as fear grows

DUFUR, Ore. (AP) — The social distancing rules repeated like a mantra in America's urban centers, where the coronavirus is spreading exponentially, might seem silly in wide-open places where neighbors live miles apart and “working from home” means another day spent branding calves or driving a tractor alone through a field.

But as the pandemic spreads through the U.S., those living in rural areas, too, are increasingly threatened. Tiny towns tucked into Oregon's windswept plains and cattle ranches miles from anywhere in South Dakota might not have had a single case of the new coronavirus, but their main streets are also empty and their medical clinics overwhelmed by the worried.

Residents from rural Alabama to the woods of Vermont to the frozen reaches of Alaska fear the spread of the disease from outsiders, the social isolation that comes when the town's only diner closes, and economic collapse in places where jobs were already scarce.

“Nobody knows what to do and they’re just running in circles, so stay away from me is what I’m saying,” said Mike Filbin, a 70-year-old cattle rancher in Wasco County, Oregon, one of the few parts of the state that has yet to see a case of COVID-19.

“Right now, we're pretty clean over here, but we're not immune to nothin' — and if they start bringing it over, it'll explode here."

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Trump administration urged to free migrants as virus surges

WASHINGTON (AP) — Pressure was mounting on the Trump administration Wednesday to release people from immigration detention facilities where at least one detainee has tested positive for COVID-19 and advocates fear tight quarters and overall conditions could cause rapid spread of the virus.

The U.S. holds around 37,000 people in immigration detention. Detainees and advocates say many are vulnerable because of age and pre-existing medical conditions, and because they are often held in open rooms, beds 3-feet apart, and without adequate supplies of masks or other protections.

“It's impossible to stay calm,” said Marco Battistotti, an Italian who is among 170 people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Bristol County jail in Massachusetts. “People are panicking. People are in fear.”

The 54-year-old Battistotti was among about 100 detainees at the county jail near Cape Cod who signed a letter released by a local immigration lawyer detailing conditions inside. They asked to be released to await decisions on their immigration cases.

“I don't want to die in an ICE jail,” he said in a phone interview with The Associated Press. "Why can't I fight my case on the outside?”

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Veterinarians donate vital supplies to coronavirus fight

RALEIGH, NC (AP) — Veterinary hospitals are donating breathing machines, masks, gowns and other vital equipment and supplies purchased with Fido in mind, but now being redeployed to help doctors fight the spread of COVID-19 among humans.

"We buy at the same stores,” said Paul Lunn, dean of the North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine in Raleigh, which on Monday turned over two full-service ventilators, 500 protective suits and 950 masks for use in area hospitals. “There's no difference in the equipment.”

In response to a call last week by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue for materials to combat the pandemic, vet schools from North Carolina to Colorado to New York are stepping up.

There are 30 fully accredited veterinary medical schools in 26 states, according to the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges. Of those, 27 have veterinary teaching hospitals with comprehensive services treating everything from pet cats and dogs to horses and other large animals. Lunn said the schools have identified more than six dozen ventilators that could be commandeered for human treatment.

The 2009 outbreak of H1N1 influenza had veterinarians readying to help in this kind of emergency, he added: "This isn't the first time we've prepared for this, although it's the first time in my personal experience that we've actually had to pull the trigger."

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Chicago uses hotels for quarantine to ease hospital demand

CHICAGO (AP) — Hours before his first shift cooking for people with mild cases of COVID-19 who are being quarantined in a downtown Chicago hotel, Jose Gonzalez made a plan to protect his family from the coronavirus.

Chicago's plan to reserve at least 1,000 hotel rooms through partnerships with five hotels is the first such sweeping strategy unveiled in the U.S. aimed at relieving the pressure on hospitals that are the only option for the seriously sick.

But it will assuredly not be the last.

Government officials nationwide are searching for facilities that could act as a relief valve for hospitals amid building concern that demand will exceed available space and equipment for coronavirus patients with severe symptoms.

Gonzalez, 27, said he has been reassured that only city employees will interact with patients. But he's planning to frequently wash his hands, remove his shoes outside his house and stash his uniform in a trash bag until it can be washed to limit his chances of becoming ill or spreading the virus to his 5-year-old daughter and fiance.

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AP PHOTOS: Virus accentuates isolation of Spain's homeless

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — While Spanish authorities tell the public that staying home is the best way to beat the coronavirus pandemic, some people are staying out because home has come to mean the streets of Madrid and Barcelona.

Spain, which ranks fourth worldwide among the countries with the most virus cases, is under a government-imposed lockdown that has closed stores, emptied office buildings and left cities largely deserted, day and night.

In typically bustling Barcelona, figures with boxes and blankets, mattresses or tents, punctuate the eerie emptiness. The bare sidewalks and doorways of shuttered shops where they bed down during a national health emergency accentuate the isolation of the city's homeless population, of about 1,000.

“It is as if there has been a nuclear explosion and (people) are all sheltering in the bunker. Only us, the homeless, are left outside," says 36-year-old Gana, who has lived on the street for more than eight years and uses only one name.

He is taking advantage of the unprecedented absence of activity to make the doorstep of a designer furniture store, which has been closed for days, the place where he lies on a cardboard box covered by a single blanket for the night.