The National Basketball Association announced it will suspend its season, after a Utah Jazz player tested positive for the coronavirus. Los Angeles Times story here. The announcement may put pressure on New York City and state to order Broadway to go on hiatus.
Other developments related to the outbreak:
A Broadway usher who worked recent performances of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Six tested positive for Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. New York Times story.
Justin Davidson, New York magazine’s classical music and architecture critic, called on the city’s performing arts to suspend performances, as well as cinemas, bars and clubs to close. “The evidence suggests that the choice is not between a shutdown and no shutdown; it’s between shutting things down now, when the disease is still relatively rare in our area, or waiting until more people have died, the virus has propagated further, and the medical system starts to be overburdened.”
Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson tested positive for the coronavirus. Deadline story.
Performances of Hamilton and The Last Ship were suspended in San Francisco for two weeks in response to a local ban of events with more than 1,000 people. SFWeekly story.
President Trump said he will significantly restrict travel from Europe to the U.S. for the next 30 days. U.S. stock index futures dropped on the news. It won’t affect U.S. permanent residents or the U.K. Bloomberg News story.
Late night television shows, including those hosted by Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah, will forego their studio audiences, beginning Monday. Hollywood Reporter story.
Earlier in the day, Gov. Cuomo at a press conference said the facts surrounding the outbreak, which the World Health Organization declared a pandemic, don’t justify the amount of fear. Although he cited the advice of Anthony Fauci, a member of the president’s coronavirus task force, to reduce large gatherings, the governor said he wasn’t prepared to order a ban on them. “You don’t want to shut down society, right, because that’s massively disruptive to the economy, to life, etc, but your main concern here is the public health crisis, balancing the two.” Video here.
On Wednesday, 23 of Broadway’s 31 shows offered discounted tickets at TDF’s TKTS booths, including West Side Story, Six, Company, Ain’t Too Proud and Moulin Rouge.
