The bleak news Thursday — 6.6 million new unemployment claims on top of 3.3 million last week — came as the competition for scarce ventilators, masks and other protective gear seemed to grow more desperate and deaths mounted.
By
MICHAEL R. SISAK, LORI HINNANT and MARK SHERMAN Associated Press
The number of U.S. deaths could range from 100,000 to 240,000 even if Americans continue to stay home and limit contact with others, experts predicted at a media briefing with President Donald Trump.
The stunning report Thursday from the Labor Department showed that job cuts are mounting against the backdrop of economies in the United States and abroad that have almost certainly sunk into a severe recession as businesses have shut down across the world.
Even as the virus has slowed its growth in overwhelmed Italy and in China, where it first emerged, hospitals in Spain and France are reaching their breaking points and the U.S. and Britain are bracing for incoming waves of desperately ill people.
