Coronavirus updates: Friday's events as they happened - BBC News
Borders close and sports events are cancelled as leaders themselves are quarantined.
“I just got the result, and he’s negative for Covid-19.”

Relief flooded through me, as the family paediatrician relayed the news that our middle son Toby did not have the coronavirus.

It has been a horrendous week - beginning with Toby being hospitalized in Brooklyn with a fever of almost 106F and flu-like symptoms. But he tested negative for flu.

This struck our paediatrician and the ER doctor as suspicious, and both wanted to test our 17-year-old athletic high school senior for the coronavirus. Yet this was no easy matter.

On Monday, the paediatrician had no tests at the practice. In the ER, the protocol is to call the department of health and ask if the patient should be tested.

Until extremely recently, the department of health would only test people who had come into contact with other infected people, or travelled to an area where coronavirus is rampant. I heard several ER doctors complain that for days, people they suspected to be infected were turned down for tests.

Toby and I were put in a negative pressure isolation room at the hospital emergency room, wearing masks, and medical staff who came into contact with us had to wear masks too.

The ER doctor told me that the protective clothing and visors worn by hospital staff were made in Wuhan, epicenter of the outbreak in China. And now there’s a shortage of that vital protective gear. We were sent home from the ER awaiting the results of other tests before a request for the coronavirus test could be made.

By Tuesday, our paediatrician had the Covid-19 test, which is a nasal swab - and Toby was tested. On Friday morning, after nearly three days of stressful family quarantine, we found out that Toby’s test was negative. He leaped around the apartment like a newborn lamb. He’s one of the lucky ones.

With the lag in testing in New York, now it’s been scaled up, we’ll rapidly see more confirmed cases. The anxiety on the rapidly emptying streets of the city is palpable.