Every Tory candidate wants to pause the leadership race—except one Welcome to the Maclean's daily newsletter. As the coronavirus disrupts life in Canada, and Canadians get used to the notion of "social distancing" and "flattening the curve," Maclean's has expanded this newsletter to include everything you need to know about the global pandemic. You'll still find our best stories of the day at the bottom of the newsletter, but we'll also catch you up on news and notes from around the world. QUOTE OF THE DAY: "The pandemic is accelerating at an exponential rate. The first 100,000 cases took 67 days. The second 100,000 took 11 days, the third 100,000 took just 4 days, and the fourth 100,000 just 2 days"—World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus Confused about all assistance programs being unveiled by governments? Have no fear, Carleton University associate professor Jennifer Robson has updated her “plain language guide to federal and provincial income benefits for people struggling to make ends meet,” available in a Google Sheet. “Share it, copy it, use it as is helpful to you and yours,” she requests. As reports grow of increasingly desperate situations in New York City hospitals, a reminder that the New York Times has dropped its paywalls for coronavirus coverage. The paper's reporters recently went into the Elmhurst Hospital in Brooklyn to document the situation, as well as the Brooklyn Hospital Center. The Waffle House restaurant chain in the U.S. is so famous for being able to stay open and resupply its locations during natural disasters that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) tracks closed and damaged locations through its Waffle House Index to roughly measure the scale of need. As of Wednesday, 418 locations—around one-quarter of the chain—are closed, a sign of the growing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Book sales are surging, the Guardian reports, with paperback sales up 35 per cent, especially the classics. Why? Lots of people are home, with lots of time on their hands. So they are reading their way through their bucket lists. People can be good: Retired baseball pitcher Dan Haren has already donated big sums to charities dealing with the fallout of the COVID-19 crisis. Now, he’s upping his charitable efforts by auctioning off his huge bobblehead collection, with the first round of collectables—complete with handwritten notes about the players—up on eBay. (The Athletic story is here.) Businesses are helping: The uber-luxurious Four Seasons hotel on 57th Street in New York City is providing free accommodation for doctors, nurses and other medical professionals working on the pandemic. Many fear they will pass the virus to loved ones. Unions are helping: A few days ago, members of the Service Employees International Union in California started an exhaustive search for N95 masks and other desperately needed personal protection equipment. They located a distributer that had 39 million N95s, and are now linking health-care providers with that commercial supplier so they can purchase them in bulk. —Patricia Treble As of the latest update, this is the number of confirmed cases in Canada. We're updating this chart every day.
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