Spring set­backs

The Univer­sity of Toledo Rock­ets’ early foot­ball foes are also hit by the pause in spring prac­tice, to vary­ing de­grees de­pend­ing on the school.

Sports | Page C1

OLYMPIA, Wash. — As the cor­o­navi­rus pan­demic knocks pri­mary elec­tions off sched­ule, Dem­o­crats say the out­break shows the coun­try needs to move to­ward one of their long­time goals — wide­spread vot­ing by mail — to pro­tect the No­vem­ber elec­tion.

But Dem­o­crats’ hopes for us­ing the cri­sis to ex­pand vot­ing by mail face Re­pub­li­can op­po­si­tion as well as sig­nifi­cant lo­gis­ti­cal chal­lenges.

In some states, it would amount to a ma­jor re­vamp of the vot­ing sys­tem just eight months be­fore an elec­tion.

Vote-by-mail boost­ers al-

ready lost the first round of the fight.

Dem­o­crats tried and failed to

in­sert a broad man­date ex­pand­ing vot­ing by mail in the stim­u­lus bill, a pro­posal that could cost as much as $2 bil­lion.

In­stead, the bill in­cluded $400 mil­lion to help states ad­just elec­tions how­ever they see fit be­fore No­vem­ber.

But Dem­o­crats in Wash­ing­ton say they will keep press­ing the is­sue, point­ing to the in­creas­ing num­ber of states that are shift­ing to mail-in vot­ing

NEW YORK — New York’s gov­er­nor is­sued an ur­gent ap­peal for med­i­cal vol­un­teers Mon­day amid a “stag­ger­ing” num­ber of deaths from the cor­o­navi­rus as he and health of­fi­cials warned that the cri­sis un­fold­ing in New York City is just a pre­view of what other com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try could soon face.

“Please come help us in New York now,” Gov. An­drew Cuomo said as the state’s death toll climbed by more than 250 in a sin­gle day to a to­tal of more than 1,200 vic­tims, most of them in the city.

He said an ad­di­tional 1 mil­lion health-care work­ers are needed to tackle the cri­sis.

Even be­fore the gov­er­nor’s ap­peal, close to 80,000 for­mer nurses, doc­tors, and other pro­fes­sion­als in New York were step­ping up to vol­un­teer.

A Navy hos­pi­tal ship, also sent to the city af­ter the Sept. 11, 2001 ter­ror at­tacks, had ar­rived with 1,000 beds to re­lieve pres­sure on over­whelmed hos­pi­tals.

In Cal­i­for­nia, of­fi­cials put out a sim­i­lar call as cor­o­navi­rus hos­pi­tal­iza­tions have dou­bled over the last four days and the num­ber of pa­tients in in­ten­sive care has tri­pled.

“If you’re a nurs­ing school stu­dent, a med­i­cal school stu­dent, we need you,” Cal­i­for­nia Gov. Gavin New­som said. “If you’ve just re­tired in the last few years, we need you.”

With cases grow­ing na­tion­wide, Pres­i­dent Trump said the U.S. gov­ern­ment is send­ing an ad­di­tional 1,000 ven­ti­la­tors over the next two days to Mich­i­gan, New Jer­sey, Il­li­nois, Lou­i­si­ana, and Con­necti­cut.

“Chal­leng­ing times are ahead for the next 30 days,” Mr. Trump said dur­ing a Rose Garden news con­fer­ence. He called re­frain­ing from pub­lic out­ings “our shared pa­tri­otic duty” dur­ing the out­break.

In the face of stark pro­jec­tions from his ad­vis­ers and sear­ing im­ages of over­whelmed hos­pi­tals in his na­tive New York City, Mr. Trump in­stead ex­tended to April 30 the so­cial dis­tanc­ing guide­lines, which had been sched­uled to ex­pire Mon­day.

Toledo Mayor Wade Kaps­zuk­ie­w­icz and Gov. Mike DeWine spoke on the tele­phone Mon­day about Toledo’s prox­im­ity to one of the na­tion’s faster-grow­ing con­cen­tra­tions of cor­o­navi­rus cases — metro Detroit, in­clud­ing dis­cuss­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of clos­ing or re­strict­ing travel be­tween Mich­i­gan and Ohio.

Mr. Kaps­zuk­ie­w­icz said he asked Mr. DeWine about the pos­si­bil­ity of clos­ing the bor­der to pro­tect north­west Ohio res­i­dents liv­ing just an hour south of Detroit, and that he wasn’t op­posed.

“He said it was not some­thing he had been plan­ning up un­til now, but it’s now on his ra­dar screen,” Mr. Kaps­zuk­ie­w­icz said. “He asked us to try to pro­vide data in num­bers of how this prob­lem could be af­fect­ing Toledo.”

At his daily brief­ing, Mr. DeWine ad­dressed his call with Mr. Kaps­zuk­ie­w­icz say­ing, “It is a con­cern; we’re look­ing at it.” He did not in­di­cate that he was con­sid­er­ing ac­tion to re­strict travel across the state line.

Dan Tier­ney, a spokes­man for gov­er­nor’s of­fice, said if such plans were made they would be an­nounced dur­ing one of the daily brief­ings.

At Pres­i­dent Trump’s re­quest, the Centers for Dis­ease Con­trol and Preven­tion has is­sued ad­vi­sories urg­ing

res­i­dents of New York, New Jer­sey, and Con­necti­cut to re­frain from non­essen­tial do­mes­tic travel for 14 days ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ately.

If Ohio­ans are fol­low­ing the gov­er­nor’s stay-at-home or­der, Mr. Tier­ney said, they shouldn’t have to worry about the vi­rus spread­ing. All the pre­cau­tions Mr. DeWine has put in place — clos­ing schools, lim­it­ing ser­vices to only those that are es­sen­tial, and or­der­ing res­i­dents to self-iso­late at home — were

meant to pre­vent trans­mis­sion from any source.

“If Ohio­ans fol­low the or­der, it’s go­ing to dra­mat­i­cally re­duce the in­ter­ac­tions that peo­ple are go­ing to have to spread this dis­ease,” Mr. Tier­ney said.

The same goes for Mich­i­gan res­i­dents, who were placed on a stay-home-stay-safe or­der on March 23, the day af­ter Ohio an­nounced its or­der, said Lynn Sut­fin, a Mich­i­gan Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices spokes­man.

“So peo­ple are not sup­posed to be trav­el­ing,” ex­cept to re­ceive es­sen­tial ser­vices, Ms. Sut­fin said. “That would in­clude not trav­el­ing to an­other state to do things,

COLUMBUS — Ohio’s K-12 stu­dents will re­main home at least through May 1.

Gov. Mike DeWine on Mon­day ex­tended his cur­rent three-week clos­ing or­der that would have ex­pired at the end of this week.

“We’ll re-eval­u­ate this as we get closer to May 1,” he said at his daily brief­ing. “This should not be a sur­prise to any­one.”

In Co­lum­bus, Mr. DeWine made it clear that it’s pos­si­ble stu­dents may not re­turn to their phys­i­cal class­rooms for the rest of this ac­a­demic year, but said it’s too soon to make that de­ci­sion.

“School re­ally con­tin­ues,” Mr. DeWine said. “It’s not con­tin­u­ing in the class­room or a build­ing, but it’s con­tin­u­ing. ... But it’s clear that we’re not go-

ing to be back in the class­room be­fore May 1. ... Is it pos­si­ble that that will have to con­tinue the way it is now re­motely un­til the end of the

school year? Yes, it is... We just don’t know yet.”

He said it is pos­si­ble that the school year could be ex­tended into the sum­mer, but he said it is more likely the state would stick with re­mote learn­ing.

Ot­tawa Hills Lo­cal Schools Su­per­in­ten­dent Adam Fineske and Per­rys­burg Schools Su­per­in­ten­dent Tom Hos­ler praised Gov. DeWine for his lead­er­ship dur­ing this tu­mul­tu­ous time.

“I think the gov­er­nor made

The cor­o­navi­rus has claimed a third per­son’s life in Lu­cas County, while it also has fur­ther in­fected lo­cal health de­part­ment work­ers.

Toledo-Lu­cas County Health Com­mis­sioner Eric Zgod­zin­ski con­firmed the county’s third death to be a male in his 60s. The cur­rent age range of the county’s 94 con­firmed cases ex­tends from 19 to 98.

“Un­for­tu­nately, to­day we have to an­nounce our third death,” Mr. Zgod­zin­ski said Mon­day dur­ing a vir­tual news con­fer­ence. “As al­ways, it’s hard. The com­mu­nity should un­der­stand, though, that’s prob­a­bly not go­ing to be our last one.”

Mr. Zgod­zin­ski also said the num­ber of staff mem­bers from his de­part­ment who have

tested pos­i­tive for the vi­rus is now up to six, two more than pre­vi­ously be­lieved. Last Thurs­day, the health de­part­ment’s build­ing on Erie Street

in down­town Toledo was shut down to un­dergo a deep clean­ing over the week­end af­ter two em­ploy­ees were con­firmed to have the vi­rus and two more were sus­pected.

The build­ing will re­open on Tues­day. Mr. Zgod­zin­ski said his de­part­ment is mon­i­tor­ing health de­part­ment em­ploy­ees closely and he ex­pects more cases to arise given they are “put­ting them­selves in harm’s way” daily to treat com­mu­nity