By Veronica Rocha, Fernando Alfonso III, Joshua Berlinger, Jessie Yeung, Adam Renton and Meg Wagner, CNN
The Chicago St. Patrick's Day Parade — one of the largest St. Patrick's Day parades in the US — has been canceled, organizers announced on their website.
The parade was slated for Saturday afternoon. Each year, Chicago's parade and river dyeing attracts hundreds of thousands of people to downtown.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker are expected to give updates at a novel coronavirus briefing later this morning.
Illinois has reported 19 coronavirus cases as of yesterday.
Your questions, answered
No one knows for sure. President Trump suggested this coronavirus could subside by the warmer summer months — but scientists say it's too early to tell.
"The short answer is that while we may expect modest declines in the contagiousness of (novel coronavirus) in warmer, wetter weather and perhaps with the closing of schools ... it is not reasonable to expect these declines alone to slow transmission enough to make a big dent," wrote Dr. Marc Lipsitch, director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar responded to Trump's suggestion that coronavirus could weaken in warmer weather.
"What the President is saying is, we hope it will respond the way regular coronaviruses do and be heat responsive," Azar said.
"But it also could just as equally respond the way SARS — a coronavirus adaptation — responds and continue in the warm season."
From CNN’s Eoin McSweeney
Lufthansa has canceled 23,000 short-, medium- and long-haul flights between March 29 and April 24 because of coronavirus.
The German airline says the cancellations will mainly impact flights in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. It is warning that further cancellations are expected in the coming weeks.
From CNN's Crama Hassan
Georgetown University in Washington, DC, will move classes online starting on Monday due to concerns over the novel coronavirus outbreak, they announced in a statement on their website.
The university is currently on spring break.
“We are suspending all in-person, on-campus classroom instruction. This will continue until further notice,” the statement said.
All undergraduate students are advised to return home, but the campus will remain open. No guests will be allowed into any residential facilities starting this Sunday, according to the school's website.
Washington, DC, is currently reporting four cases of coronavirus.
Georgetown is the latest school to close campus classrooms during the coronavirus outbreak.
The cancellations have been focused in states and areas hardest hit by the virus, including the Seattle area, California and New York. The Ohio State University, which has an enrollment of more than 60,000 students, and Harvard University, the Ivy League institution, were some of the most recent schools to announce they are closing classrooms.
From CNN's Kevin Liptak
The Trump administration is considering a delay in the April 15 tax filing deadline as a response to the coronavirus, two people familiar with the plans said.
The idea has been discussed among White House and Treasury Department officials over the past few days, the people said. The IRS would likely extend the deadline by at least several months or waive fees associated with late filing.
Last week, when asked about the notion of delaying the deadline, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told lawmakers it wasn't under consideration.
But since then, the White House has heard from some allies, along with public statements from certain Democrats, that extending the deadline could be a way to reduce the economic fallout from coronavirus.
The possible delay in the deadline was reported earlier today by the Wall Street Journal.
From CNN’s Anneken Tappe
US stocks opened in the red this morning, retracing yesterday's sharp gains, as worries about the coronavirus outbreak once again took over.
Here's how things look:
You can follow live updates on how the markets are reacting to coronavirus fears here.
CNN is collecting your questions about coronavirus. We'll be answering some of them here throughout the day.
Clay Bentley is under quarantine in a hospital in Rome, Georgia, which is just outside Atlanta. He spoke with CNN this morning from his hospital room.
"It's been a long road. But I'm getting through it. I'm improving daily," he told CNN
He said he went to the hospital when he first started feeling sick — but when a flu test came back negative, staffers sent him home. He went back when he kept getting worse, and he was initially diagnosed with coronavirus.
He said he's been given fluids, antibiotics and breathing treatments.
Bentley said he hopes more people will be tested so the community can contain the spread.
"You know, this is what I see, instead of dealing with it, doing the testing and testing the people that need to be tested, everybody's running in fear," he said. "I feel like everybody's running in mass hysteria trying to take care of things instead of finding the people who need to be tested and let's take care of the problem."
Watch:
From CNN's Chloe Melas
Studio audiences for several Disney-owned talk shows will be suspended over concern for the growing number of coronavirus cases in New York, the Walt Disney Television announced today.
"LIVE with Kelly and Ryan," "The Tameron Hall Show" and "The View," — three nationally broadcast ABC shows based in New York — will no longer have studio audiences in attendance.
"Given the current developing situation in New York City, we have made the decision to suspend live audiences from attending our news broadcasts and talk shows," a Walt Disney Television spokesperson told CNN.
"The Wendy Williams Show" announced a similar change on Tuesday.
