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Coronavirus deaths in the United States passed 4,600 Wednesday as Vice President Pence issued an ominous warning that America’s situation is most comparable to Italy’s struggle with the virus, which has pushed that nation’s hospitals to capacity and has left more than 13,000 people dead despite a weeks-long lockdown. The prediction was among a fresh batch of reminders that as the United States makes its agonizing march toward the peak of the covid-19 pandemic, each day will bring more suffering than the last. (Zapotosky, Miroff and Duncan, 4/1)

Coronavirus deaths soared. New York City playgrounds were targeted for shutdown to help slow an outbreak projected to grow worse for another month. Overtaxed hospitals began transferring patients north of the city. And residents near one struggling hospital have become all too used to ambulance sirens. “It’s very eerie. I think everyone’s just doing what they can, but at the same time it bothers you. Especially if you’re around Elmhurst because you can hear all the ambulances,” said Emma Sorza, near Elmhurst Hospital in Queens. (Bumsted, Villeneuve and Hill, 4/2)

The Empire State Building blinked red this week as New York became the central terrain in the international battle against the coronavirus — a siren not just for battered Manhattan but for state and local authorities across the country racing to avoid a similar fate. New cases this week drove the state’s total above 75,000, surpassing China’s Hubei province, where the virus emerged in December. (Buarino and Stanley-Becker, 4/1)

New York’s death toll from COVID-19 is nearing 2,000, and experts warn it will continue to rise. But many other areas of the country are also seeing cases climb and taking steps to try to limit them. President Trump sounded a grave warning during a Tuesday Coronavirus Task Force briefing, saying the virus is projected to kill at least 100,000 Americans in the months to come. (Yang, 4/1)

New York City has already set up 45 new mobile morgues. Local crematories are now allowed to work around the clock. At one Brooklyn hospital, the in-house morgue was filled to capacity on Tuesday. The next day, the nursing staff ran out of body bags. As the coronavirus epidemic enters its second month, the casualties in New York are starting to severely tax the city’s ability to accommodate its dead. With more than 1,000 deaths so far and thousands more projected, city officials are working hard to stave off an emergency. In the past few days, the city’s medical examiner’s office has taken over the collection of bodies, dispatching the fleet of new refrigerated trailers to hospitals in all five boroughs, some of whose morgues have already filled up. (Feuer and Salcedo, 4/2)

“Back up, sir!” shouted Kenny Kiefer, a Fire Department battalion chief, his N95 mask muffling his words. “What?” replied the frail older man leaning out the doorway of a shelter and addiction treatment center, who had called 911 because he was having trouble breathing. Smiling timidly, he began to venture down the stairs. Alarmed, Chief Kiefer stepped back and thrust out his palm. “Stay right there!” (Hoffman, 4/1)

The new coronavirus has struck hardest in working-class neighborhoods in New York City’s outer boroughs, city data shows, underlining how the pandemic has ravaged densely packed lower-income areas where social-distancing guidelines have proved difficult to implement. Two areas of Queens—Corona and Elmhurst—have led the city in reported infections, with 947 and 831 as of March 31, respectively, the data show. Both neighborhoods are heavily populated by immigrants who live in close quarters, often with multiple families sharing a dwelling, said City Councilman Francisco Moya. (Honan, 4/1)

The coronavirus has ravaged all of New York City, closing schools, emptying streets and turning stadiums into makeshift hospitals. But data made public by city health officials on Wednesday suggests it is hitting low-income neighborhoods the hardest. (Buchanan, Patel, Rosenthal and Singhvi, 4/1)

A New York City Housing Authority retiree ticked off his running tally: an ex-wife sick, a daughter sick, and three old friends dead. In Queens, a young poet learned a friend’s parents are in the hospital, one on a ventilator. And Qtina Parson of Parkchester, the Bronx, gave a grim reversal of the cheerful family updates one expects from the proud mother, sister and aunt that she used to sound like just a couple of weeks — a lifetime — ago. (Wilson, 4/2)

Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York called me this morning a little out of breath, feet pounding in the background, on his daily walk in Prospect Park. It’s the kind of stubbornly pointless personal ritual his critics in the media find incredibly annoying — couldn’t he just stay home at Gracie Mansion and clap for health care workers like his neighbors? “I can’t put on a costume and pretend to be a different person than I am,” he told me. (Smith, 4/1)

The wire arrived in New York City from an incoming ship at sea, announcing that 10 of its passengers and 11 crew members were ill. So a team of doctors and officials waited at a Brooklyn pier to greet the Norwegian vessel Bergensfjord and, with it, the first cases in the city of the deadliest pandemic in modern human history. It was Aug. 11, 1918. The ship docked, the sick were rushed to nearby hospitals, and the pier was placed under quarantine. Everything appeared to be under control. Then more sick arrived. (Wilson, 4/2)