Local business owners have been left stranded after the Small Business Administration announced their rescue loan program ran out of money on Thursday, April 16.

The SBA’s $350 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is a part of the $2.2 trillion CARES act approved by Congress in late March to help businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nearly 11,000 Arizona businesses were approved for a total of $3.5 billion, according to the SBA’s PPP report released Monday, April 13. PPP is touted as a “first come, first serve” program which applicants could apply for in early April.

Rocco DiGrazia, owner of Rocco’s Little Chicago, said he filed his PPP application within four hours of the SBA’s online application portal opening. DiGrazia has a 20-year business relationship with Chase Bank. His personal banker, as well the bank’s branch manager, even called to let DiGrazia know to file as soon as the portal was available to the public.

“I prepared for it the second we heard about the program and I had all my documents ready that morning. Within four hours of the portal being open I had my stuff in,” DiGrazia said. “When nothing happened by Monday I contacted my banker and asked, 'What’s going on? Have you heard of anyone at your branch getting this loan?' and she said she had heard nothing.”

DiGrazia only found out he wouldn’t be receiving a PPP loan after his bank sent him an email stating the program was out of money on Thursday. The situation is becoming critical for the beloved local pizza proprietor. He has been paying his staff full wages despite closing his restaurant as a part of the program’s loan-forgiveness option, which stipulates employers can’t layoff their employees for about two-and-a-half months after receiving the loan. DiGrazia said he was anticipating the PPP loan to recoup payroll during the pandemic.

“This is the first full pay period where nobody has worked,” DiGrazia said. “I have a 30-something person staff that I paid their full salary out of my own pocket in anticipation for at least getting some of my money back.”

Class of 2020 has had a bad go of it, haven't they? They're missing out on the last vestiges of high school life and socialization, they won't get to walk in their graduations, and they're missing their proms. At least, physically they are.

Virtually, there are a plethora of things to do. For school, they have Zoom, YouTube, Google Museums and more. For fun, they can make friends and short videos on TikTok, or even hang out at Walt Disney World.

And for Prom, they can hang out with John Krasinski.

Krasinski, who is well-known for his character Jim on The Office, has taken it upon himself to create a YouTube show called SomeGoodNews (SGN).

SGN brings good news to the world through a camera in Krasinski's living room, where he conducts interviews with interesting people and spreads good news to everyone watching. Through this venue, he will also be hosting a virtual prom.

This announcement from TikTok doesn't say much, but it does bring the hype.

There aren't many details known, except that it will start at this location on YouTube at 8 p.m. EDT (5 p.m. MST) tonight, Friday, April 17th. (As of this writing, there are already over 1,500 people waiting for the broadcast.) It's also titled, "SGN Prom with John Krasinski and Friends", which might imply some appearances from other people that Krasinski may know, though that hasn't been confirmed.

So, if you are or you know a high schooler who isn't doing anything tonight, now there's something they can do. Hang out at a virtual prom with thousands of other people online with Jim from The Office. Not a bad Friday night.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Arizona hit 4,507 as of Friday, April 17, according to the morning report from the Arizona Department of Health Services.

Pima County had seen 819 of the state’s confirmed cases.

The coronavirus had killed 169 people statewide, including 51 in Pima County, according to the report.

In Maricopa County, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases had risen to 2,404.

Because testing still lags in Arizona, health officials say those numbers undercount the number of people infected with the virus. The state is not yet releasing information about how many people who have tested positive have now recovered.

Ducey this week announced a partnership with the University of Arizona to produce 250,000 tests for COVID-19 antibodies. Such tests could tell people if they have already been exposed to COVID-19, which is deadly to some patients while others remain asymptomatic. Testing for antibodies could identify people who are no longer at risk for catching COVID-19, although there have been reports of people coming down with the disease after beating it once.

Ducey said the tests would go to healthcare workers and first responders.

Here are the different stories we covered today:

• The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Arizona had topped 4,200 as of Thursday, April 16, according to the morning report from the Arizona Department of Health Services.
• An internal memorandum written by U.S. officials and addressed to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warns that cutting funding to the World Health Organization, as President Donald Trump said he would do Tuesday, would erode America’s global standing, threaten U.S. lives and hobble global efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
• Arizona hospitals are facing “dire financial consequences” and furloughing staff, as cutbacks meant to prepare for COVID-19 cases have instead cost them as much as $575 million a month, about 30-40% of normal revenues statewide.
• In recent weeks, residents outside Boston have died at home much more often than usual. In Detroit, authorities are responding to nearly four times the number of reports of dead bodies. And in New York, city officials are recording more than 200 home deaths per day — a nearly sixfold increase from recent years.
• The U.S. Postal Service appears to be continuing its checkered response to the coronavirus. Workers across the country say they’re not being informed when colleagues have tested positive for COVID-19, despite a Postal Service policy to do so.
• Raytheon employees in Tucson will lead the way on work for the United States Navy’s Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile system after a $13.7 million contract modification was awarded to the company on Wednesday.
• A lot of businesses are struggling with the closures for COVID-19 precautions. But, that didn't stop one business in Marana from opening after months of planning and construction.

Raytheon employees in Tucson will lead the way on work for the United States Navy’s Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile system after a $13.7 million contract modification was awarded to the company on Wednesday.

More than 90 percent of the work will be done in Tucson, according to a press release announcing the decision. Work will also occur in the Netherlands, Norway, Germany, and Australia, in addition to sites in West Virginia, Canada, Spain, and Turkey.

The missile program is described as an international cooperative effort and is a medium-range surface-to-air system designed to protect ships from missiles and attacking aircraft. Development of the Sea Sparrow program began with NATO in 1990, and Raytheon delivered the first production system to the Navy. The missile entered into service in 2004.

Work on the current project is expected to wrap up in December and the contract includes purchases for the Navy and the governments of Thailand, Japan, and the United Arab Emirates.

Raytheon was originally awarded the contract in 2016 at a potential value of $197 million.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Click here to read their biggest stories as soon as they’re published.
The U.S. Postal Service appears to be continuing its checkered response to the coronavirus. Workers across the country say they’re not being informed when colleagues have tested positive for COVID-19, despite a Postal Service policy to do so.

At the end of March, after workers complained, the Postal Service told its employees they would be notified if someone “in your workplace is confirmed to have COVID-19.”

But workers at 11 locations told ProPublica they found out about cases through colleagues or were only told by management days after word had already gotten out.

“People are scared because management has stopped communicating,” said David Denton, a mail handler at a Long Island processing plant. “We have a right to know from management exactly how many cases are confirmed in the building.” Denton said he’s heard of several positive cases at his location, but employees haven’t been told anything by management.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Click here to read their biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

In recent weeks, residents outside Boston have died at home much more often than usual. In Detroit, authorities are responding to nearly four times the number of reports of dead bodies. And in New York, city officials are recording more than 200 home deaths per day — a nearly sixfold increase from recent years.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the United States had logged more than 592,000 cases of COVID-19 and more than 24,000 deaths, the most in the world, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. But the official COVID-19 death count may, at least for now, be missing fatalities that are occurring outside of hospitals, data and interviews show. Cities are increasingly showing signs of Americans succumbing to the coronavirus in their own beds.

ProPublica requested death data from several major metropolitan areas. Its review provides an early look at the pandemic’s hidden toll.

Experts say it’s possible that some of the jump in at-home death stems from people infected by the virus who either didn’t seek treatment or did but were instructed to shelter in place, and that the undercount is exacerbated by lack of comprehensive testing. It’s also possible that the increase in at-home deaths reflects people dying from other ailments like heart attacks because they couldn’t get to a hospital or refused to go, fearful they’d contract COVID-19.

WASHINGTON – Arizona hospitals are facing “dire financial consequences” and furloughing staff, as cutbacks meant to prepare for COVID-19 cases have instead cost them as much as $575 million a month, about 30-40% of normal revenues statewide.

The cancellation of elective procedures meant to free up beds for potential coronavirus patients, combined with a drop in emergency room visits, has deprived hospitals of the “cash cows” they need to stay afloat in an industry that otherwise has margins of only 3-4%, advocates said.

The result is health care centers in financial distress, at risk of closing or reducing staff, said Dr. Daniel Derksen, director of the Arizona Center for Rural Health at the University of Arizona.

“If you don’t have the revenues to support paying your nurses and physicians and staff and transport, lab, imaging, X-rays, those types of things, it creates just an untenable situation,” Derksen said.

Here are the stories that we covered today:

• The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Arizona had reached 3,962 as of Wednesday, April 15, according to the morning report from the Arizona Department of Health Services.
• The Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner was unable to determine how Picture Rocks resident Sara Galloway died, according to a report filed Tuesday.
• Before the COVID-19 emergency reached our community, a group of young women in the Unidas after-school program were working hard to provide grant money for a local organization that aims to improve quality of life for women and girls in Southern Arizona.
• Innovation Academy Principal Michael McConnell is used to seeing hundreds of excited children in the halls of his Oro Valley school—and the empty campus is an unwelcome sight.
• In the age of COVID-19, college students all over the world are adapting to a new normal of online classes, shortened semesters and canceled graduations.
• Facing large projected losses in revenue due to COVID-19, the University of Arizona is taking steps to trim its budget.
• The University of Arizona will begin testing 250,000 of Arizona’s health care workers and first responders for COVID-19, as part of a new partnership with the state government.
• The Tucson City Council discussed an expected significant collapse in city sales tax and other revenue streams during the COVID-19 pandemic at yesterday’s study session, but they won’t know how bad the situation is until summer.
• Congress has approved billions of dollars of checks for Americans hard hit by the biggest round of layoffs in U.S. history. But millions of Americans will have to wait months for that money — and millions more may never get the money at all.
• With many of our distribution points closed under the stay-at-home order, you may be wondering where you can still find a copy of Tucson Weekly.