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When the coronavirus outbreakhit one of the largest and mosttroubled nursing homes in theNortheast, coughing and feverishresidents were segregated into awing known as South 2. The sickquickly filled the beds there, so an-other wing, West 3, was alsoturned into a quarantine ward.

But the virus kept finding frailand older residents, and one cul-prit became clear: The workersthemselves were likely spreadingit as they moved between roomsand floors, outfitted with little orno protective equipment.

The nursing home, AndoverSubacute and Rehabilitation Cen-ter II in Andover, N.J., which has543 beds, was chronically short ofstaff and masks, and over the lasttwo years it had received poorgrades from federal and state in-spectors. Residents were crowdedthree to a room, and as the out-break worsened, so did sanitaryconditions. Spilled food litteredthe floors.

Workers said they hurriedlymade their rounds, dispensingmedicine, changing bedsheets,feeding those who could not feedthemselves and doing other tasksthat brought them into close con-tact with residents.

Some workers bought rudi-mentary face shields from a recre-ation supervisor who purchased a

box online for $160. By last week,employees were pleading for helpfrom the government and for do-nations of personal protectiveequipment in Facebook posts.

But it was too late.After receiving an anonymous

tip last Monday, the police found17 bodies in bags in a small holdingroom at the Andover facility.

The startling discovery illus-trated the toll that the coronavirusoutbreak has taken on the nation’snursing homes and other congre-gate facilities that house society’smost vulnerable, including olderpeople and those with mental andphysical disabilities.

By Sunday, at least 70 Andoverresidents had died and dozens ofthe 420 remaining residents andstaff members had either testedpositive for the virus or were sickwith fevers, coughs or both, ac-cording to county officials.

The coronavirus crisis haskilled more than 7,000 people atnursing homes across the country,The New York Times has deter-mined, and has even ravaged fa-cilities with sterling reputations.

But it has been especially dev-astating at nursing homes likeAndover that have long come un-der criticism for quality of care, in-adequate staffing and question-able business practices.

This examination by The Timesof what happened at Andover isbased on interviews with currentand former workers, administra-

Inside the Nursing HomeWhere 17 Bodies Piled Up

Troubled Facility in Western New Jersey Struggled Even Before Contagion

This article is by Tracey Tully, Bri-an M. Rosenthal, Matthew Gold-stein and Robert Gebeloff.

ANDREW SENG FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Levester Thompson Jr., right, in a photo held by his wife, was one of 1,550 New Yorkers who died of the virus April 6 and 7. Page A16.Lives Lost on 2 Cruel Days

Even before the coronavirus,Nina Brajovic wasn’t so sureabout her life in New York. As aconsultant for Pricewaterhouse-Coopers, she spent most weeksout of town traveling for work. Sheoften wondered whether shecould do her same job for cheaper— and more easily — while basedin her hometown, Pittsburgh.

Over the past month, she hasgotten a sneak peek of that life,moving back in with her parentsto avoid the wall-to-wall density ofNew York and working out of herchildhood bedroom. She is now sa-voring life’s slowness, eating herfather’s soup and watching mov-ies on an L-shaped couch with hermom.

“Part of it feels like, why am I

even living in New York?” saidMs. Brajovic, 24, who pays $1,860in rent each month for her share ofan apartment with two room-mates in Manhattan. “Why am Ialways paying all of this rent?”

With her lease up for renewal,she is contemplating whether tomake the move more permanent.

“I have no idea what I am goingto do,” said Ms. Brajovic. “But it isa thought in my mind: the poten-tial of not going back.”

The pandemic has been particu-larly devastating to America’s big-gest cities, as the virus has found

fertile ground in the density that isotherwise prized. And it comes asthe country’s major urban centerswere already losing their appealfor many Americans, as skyrock-eting rents and changes in the la-bor market have pushed the coun-try’s youngest adults to suburbsand smaller cities often far fromthe coasts.

The country’s three largestmetropolitan areas, New York,Los Angeles and Chicago, all lostpopulation in the past severalyears, according to an analysis byWilliam Frey, a demographer atthe Brookings Institution. Evenslightly smaller metro areas, likeHouston, Washington, D.C., andMiami grew more slowly than be-fore. In all, growth in the country’smajor metropolitan areas fell bynearly half over the course of the

City Dwellers Weigh Saying Goodbye to All ThatBy SABRINA TAVERNISE

and SARAH MERVOSH

FROM LEFT: JUAN ARREDONDO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES; LYNDON FRENCH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES; LUCY NICHOLSON/REUTERS

From left: commuters at Broadway Junction in the Brooklyn borough of New York; Chicago’sdowntown; the freeways of Los Angeles. Each city has lost population over the past several years.

Crisis Ignites a Desirefor Open Spaces, and

Cheaper Rents

Continued on Page A10

A law firm in Scottsdale, Ariz.,tested employees who hoped, withthe prick of a finger, to learn if theymight be immune. In Laredo,Texas, community leaders se-cured 20,000 of the new tests togauge how many residents hadbeen infected. In Chicago, a hospi-tal screened firefighters to helpdetermine whether they couldsafely stay on the job.

In recent weeks, the UnitedStates has seen the first rollout ofblood tests for coronavirus anti-bodies, widely heralded as crucialtools to assess the reach of thepandemic in the United States, re-start the economy and reintegratesociety.

But for all their promise, thetests — intended to signalwhether people may have builtimmunity to the virus — are al-ready raising alarms.

Officials fear the effort mayprove as problematic as the earli-er launch of diagnostic tests thatfailed to monitor which Ameri-cans, and how many, had been in-fected or developed the diseasethe virus causes. Criticized for atragically slow and rigid oversightof those tests months ago, the fed-eral government is now faulted bypublic health officials and scien-tists for greenlighting the anti-body tests too quickly and withoutadequate scrutiny.

The Food and Drug Administra-tion has allowed about 90 compa-nies, many based in China, to selltests that have not gotten govern-ment vetting, saying the pan-

FLAWS HINDERINGANTIBODY TESTING

Procedure Is Crucial Toolfor Reopening U.S.

This article is by Steve Eder,Megan Twohey and Apoorva Man-davilli.

Continued on Page A11

WASHINGTON — Shortly be-fore midnight on Friday, and justhours after he had taken to Twitterto encourage Americans to “liber-ate” three Democratic-governedstates from stay-at-home orders,President Trump reopened hisTwitter app and went on anotherbrief tear. He retweeted 11 postsby Charlie Kirk, a young right-

wing provocateur with ties to theTrump family and a social mediapresence that attracts far more at-tention than some mainstreamnews organizations.

The tweets by Mr. Kirk, 26, whoruns Turning Point USA, a conser-vative student group, hit just theright marks for the president. Onetweet accused the World HealthOrganization of covering up thecoronavirus outbreak, and up-braided Democrats for opposingthe president’s decision to cut the

group’s funding. Another claimedDemocrats were appeasing Bei-jing and not doing enough to helpAmericans left jobless by the pan-demic. A few covered some of thepresident’s longstanding griev-ances, such as the conviction of

Roger Stone and claims of voterfraud. A well-worn conspiracytheory about Hunter Biden’s deal-ings with China even made an ap-pearance.

Never mind that the W.H.O. —which Mr. Kirk called “the WuhanHealth Organization,” after thecity where the pandemic began —issued warnings about the virusearly and often, and that a numberof the other tweets similarly mis-

A Provocateur Who Put the Words ‘China Virus’ in Trump’s MouthBy MATTHEW ROSENBERG

and KATIE ROGERSYoung Leader, Fudging

Facts, Fuels the Right

Continued on Page A7

MOSCOW — Nearly as big asCalifornia but served by only ahandful of mostly decrepit Soviet-era hospitals, the remote northernRussian region of Komi is a coro-navirus petri dish for the horrorslying in wait for the world’s largestcountry.

Amid growing evidence that thepathogen had already breachedKomi’s feeble defenses, the localauthorities moved vigorously lastweek to contain the crisis: The po-lice summoned critics of the re-gional government to ask howthey knew about an outbreak in ahospital at a time when officials inKomi were insisting nobody hadbeen infected.

Among those called in for ques-tioning was Pavel Andreev, the di-rector of 7x7 Komi, an independ-ent online journal that revealedlast month how a surgeon in aKomi state hospital sick withCovid-19 had infected patients.

Mr. Andreev said the police offi-cer who led the interrogationmainly wanted to know about acomment the media director hadposted online that said, “It is im-possible to trust the state, even inhospitals.” Mr. Andreev, who hasnot been charged or even asked totake down his post, said the en-counter was not so much menac-ing as baffling: The cat is alreadyout of the bag so “why waste timeand energy on this?” he asked.

The police intervention wascarried out at the behest of Komi’shealth minister, who was fired lastweek for his mishandling of thepandemic. It highlights one ofRussia’s biggest obstacles as itstruggles to control the spread ofthe virus in its vast and often ram-shackle hinterland: a lumberingbureaucratic machine geared firstand foremost to protecting offi-cials, even after they lose theirjobs, not safeguarding the publicor its health.

Unlike China — which routinelyarrests government critics or sim-

Official SilenceAbets OutbreakIn Putin’s Russia

By ANDREW HIGGINS

Continued on Page A6

A Major League Baseball sea-son to be played entirely in the Ar-izona desert without fans, andwith teams isolating themselvesfrom the outside world.

The N.B.A. taking over a hotelon the Las Vegas Strip so its starscan dine and dunk in their ownbubble — but only after the leaguegets access to instant coronavirustests.

Mixed-martial-arts fights liveon TV from a private island . . .somewhere.

More than a month into the co-ronavirus shutdown, the Ameri-can sports industrial complex isgetting creative, or perhaps des-perate, searching for a moonshotthat might bring professional ath-letics back to a nation largelycooped up at home and sufferingfrom collective cabin fever.

Fans are clamoring for some-thing, anything, to distract fromthe pandemic and restore sportsto the rhythm of American life;even Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, thepresidential adviser on infectiousdiseases, recently mused aboutseeing the Washington Nationalsdefend their World Series title.

Meanwhile, owners, executivesand athletes — and all the relatedbusinesses and workers who de-

Sports YearningFor a ComebackDespite the RiskThis article is by Joe Drape, Ken

Belson and Billy Witz.

Leagues in an idled $71 billionindustry face many obstacles.

BRIAN SPURLOCK/USA TODAY SPORTS, VIA REUTERS

Continued on Page A13

Continued on Page A14

Uber and Lyft started the year withoptimism. Now the ride-hailing rivalsare just trying to survive. PAGE B1

BUSINESS B1-6

Driven Toward a Free FallA post by Coco Gauff drew attention overthe word “depressed.” Her parents saidthey saw something else. PAGE D3

SPORTSMONDAY D1-5

More on a Teenager’s StruggleSotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips arestepping up online selling. The sale ofa 1981 triptych, above, by Francis Baconhas been delayed. PAGE C1

ARTS C1-7

Art Auctions Go Digital

Production has ground to a halt, leavingmany people without work and othersfinishing projects remotely. PAGE B1

A New World BackstageWill parents and children be eager toreturn to team sports once the threat ofthe pandemic has passed? PAGE D1

Youth Sports in Limbo

Paul H. O’Neill was heading into retire-ment when he was asked to take the jobin 2000. He was fired less than twoyears later by President George W.Bush. He was 84. PAGE D6

OBITUARIES B7-8, D6

Former Treasury Secretary

William Bailey swathed his nudes andstill lifes of eggs, vases, bottles andbowls in a breathless, deceptively se-rene atmosphere heavy with mystery.He was 89. PAGE B8

Modernist Figurative Painter

Bernie Sanders PAGE A21

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A20-21On the 25th anniversary of a bombingthat killed 168 people, some worry thatthe national memory is fading. PAGE A18

NATIONAL A18-19

Oklahoma City Looks Back

At least 16 people were killed, includinga police officer, after a 12-hour rampagethroughout Nova Scotia, the police said.The gunman also died.

INTERNATIONAL A17

Deadly Shooting in Canada

Kim Yong-hee, a union activist, hasbeen atop an 82-foot-tall traffic cameratower in South Korea for over 300 days.

Fighting Samsung From Above

Late Edition

VOL. CLXIX . . . No. 58,669 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, MONDAY, APRIL 20, 2020

Today, clouds and sunshine, high 58.Tonight, partly cloudy, low 44. To-morrow, clouds and sunshine, after-noon thunderstorms, high 62.Weather map appears on Page A22.

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