N.Y. Today: Children's Mystery Illness

What you need to know for Thursday.

Coronavirus in N.Y.C.: Latest Updates

It’s Thursday.

Weather: Pleasant and mostly sunny, with a high in the mid-60s.

Alternate-side parking: Suspended through Tuesday. Meters are in effect.

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Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

Officials say 64 children in N.Y. have had a mystery ailment.

Sixty-four children in New York State have been hospitalized with a mysterious illness that doctors do not yet fully understand but that may be linked to Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, officials said on Wednesday.

In an advisory to health care providers, state health officials said that most of the children who were thought to have what has been labeled “pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome” had tested positive for the virus or for antibodies to it.

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The new tally from state officials came two days after New York City health officials said that 15 children in the city had been hospitalized with the syndrome and that many of them had been infected with the virus.

The symptoms of the mystery ailment, state health officials noted, “overlap” with those associated with toxic shock syndrome and Kawasaki disease, a rare illness in children that involves inflammation of the blood vessels, including coronary arteries. Fever, abdominal symptoms and rash may also be present, officials wrote.

[Get the latest news and updates on the coronavirus in the New York region.]

College campuses in Connecticut may reopen by the fall.

Gov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut on Wednesday introduced recommendations for reopening colleges and universities in the state by fall if certain public health measures are in place and the coronavirus outbreak has diminished.

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The recommendations were included in a detailed report that generally calls for a gradual reopening of higher education campuses over the summer, although each would have final say about how it proceeded.

[Coronavirus in New York: A map and the case count.]

Nightly subway closings have begun.

The shutdown of New York City’s subway early Wednesday was the first in what will be a nightly event: For the foreseeable future, as long as the pandemic is a threat, the system will stop running from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. every night to give cleaners time to thoroughly disinfect trains, stations and equipment.

Groups of cleaners will board trains. Homeless people who have been taking shelter on cars will be moved off and, the authorities say, persuaded to enter shelters and get checked for virus symptoms.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo last week ordered the closings — the first regularly scheduled halt in the system’s 115-year history — as concerns grew that the subway had become an unsanitary rolling homeless camp and the virus took a heavy toll on transit workers.

[Here’s what the first night of the subway shutdown was like.]

From The Times

New York Lost These 5 Remarkable Characters to the Virus

What’s Going to Happen to Junior, Now That His Mother Is Dead?

The Compost by My Couch: How (and Why) I Started an Odorless Bin at Home

Natural History Museum Slashing Staff With Layoffs and Furloughs

Want more news? Check out our full coverage.

The Mini Crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.

What we’re reading

A growing number of people who work in New York’s restaurant industry are dying from the coronavirus. [Eater New York]

JetBlue airlines will fly three New York-themed passenger jets over the city in a tribute to health care workers. [New York Post]

The weather for Mother’s Day weekend? Chilly. [Staten Island Advance]

And finally: ‘March On!’

The Times’s Azi Paybarah writes:

Lucy Lang is a lawyer in Manhattan and parent to two small children. She often finds herself translating central tenets of her job — justice, fairness, courtroom proceedings — for an audience that could use the occasional reminder about potty training.

So, when Ms. Lang realized that 2020 was the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, she wanted to make sure the event was something very young people could understand.

That was the inspiration for her to write “March On!” — a children’s book about women’s suffrage that is set to be released on Sunday. The fight to pass the amendment took years and included a huge march down Fifth Avenue in 1915 — hence the title of the book.

“March On!” was illustrated by Ms. Lang’s sister, Grace Lang. It arrives as New York and much of the country are isolating at home and avoiding the kinds of mass gatherings the book celebrates. Lucy Lang said the timing was apt.

“So much of the activism around the 19th Amendment coincided with the outbreak of the Spanish flu in 1919,” she said. She also recalled a more recent parallel.

In 2018, Ms. Lang was in Washington as protesters opposed Brett M. Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court. One rally, she said, included just a handful of people using hand-held devices to talk to an online audience.

“There were thousands and thousands of people who were protesting by tuning in online,” Ms. Lang said.

“It matters that kids understand that that has an impact, especially at a time like this when kids are isolated from one another,” she added. “I do think we are going to see all kinds of creative new ways for people to get engaged.”

The lessons in the book — about taking action to control your destiny — are not abstract for Ms. Lang and her sister. Initially, they had hoped to work with a large publisher. But the sisters grew frustrated by the process and decided to publish the book themselves.

“The book is about how people who share an idea can make important social change,” Ms. Lang said. “The way the book ultimately got made, my sister and I shared this idea and we were able to bring it to fruition without relying on status-quo structure.”

It’s Thursday — take a stand.

Metropolitan Diary: New member

Dear Diary:

It was the end of my workday, and I was headed home to Brooklyn from Lower Manhattan.

Transferring to the F train midway through my commute, I found a place to stand and took out my book. As I did, I noticed that two people to my left and one to my right were also reading books, not phones or e-readers. Four strangers, standing in a row, noses buried in books — imagine that.

Another rider noticed as well. She looked at each of us with our books. Then in one swift movement, she shoved her phone into her bag and pulled out a book of her own. She proceeded to open it triumphantly.

She had joined the club.

— Ashley Semrick

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