Corona virus cases in US continue to rise

The number of coronavirus cases in the US rose on Friday to at least 240 with Washington state reporting 79 cases and California at least 60, as President Donald Trump signed an $8.3 billion emergency spending bill, which includes funding for research to allocate money to state and local governments to battle the outbreak.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average finished Friday down more than 250 points, rallying hundreds of points in the final minutes of the trading session. The blue-chip index dropped despite a strong jobs report Friday that exceeded analysts' expectations. The Standard & Poor's 500 and Nasdaq composite declined nearly 2 percent each.

New York has 33 confirmed coronavirus cases, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced announced Friday, adding that roughly 4,000 people are under "precautionary quarantine" because of possible exposure or their medical circumstances.

All but one of the 14 deaths in the US from the virus have occurred in Washington state at an elder care facility.

New York City officials asked in a letter to the federal government on Friday to send more test kits for the new coronavirus, saying that the city's limited capacity to test for the virus had "impeded our ability to beat back this epidemic".

As of noon on Friday, fewer than 100 people had been tested for the coronavirus in the cityover the past month, according to the city's health department.

State officials said on Friday that so far 33 people in the state had tested positive for the illness — the majority in New Rochelle, just north of New York City. Officials conceded there were likely far more.

Washington Governor Jay Inslee said Friday the state was forming an incident command dedicated to assisting long-term-care facilities, including the Life Care center in Kirkland, where a number of patients have died or fallen ill.

The University of Washington said Friday that it would cancel in-person classes for all campuses next week, the final week of instruction for this academic term, and finals also wouldn't be held in person.

The university, with 59,000 students across campuses in Seattle, Tacoma and Bothell, also said a staff member from the Seattle campus, currently in self-isolation at home, had received a presumptive positive diagnosis for Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, which has pneumonia-like symptoms including fever and coughing.

Officials expect to be able to resume normal classes when the new term begins March 30, pending public health guidance.

The University of California, Los Angeles said three students are being tested for Covid-19 and are self-isolating off campus. That school said local health authorities hadn't recommended changing class schedules or suspending campus operations at this point.

There were 101,583 confirmed cases of the virus world wide, more than a fifth of which were in countries other than China, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. South Korea, the second worst hit country, reported another jump in infections, bringing its tally to 6,593. The novel coronavirus is now in around 90 countries. As of Friday morning, 3,460 people have died globally, according to Johns Hopkins.