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Stories of people emptying supermarket shelves or arguing over packets of pasta can paint a bleak picture of the coronavirus outbreak. But there are also acts of kindness that have inspired thousands of others.

Beauty Banks, a charity that supplies essential toiletries to people in poverty, launched an emergency virus-related appeal on Sunday.

"Since just after noon yesterday we've raised £60,000 to pay for soap, hand sanitiser, washing powder and so on to help people who don't have the money to stockpile," said columnist Sali Hughes, who co-founded the campaign two years ago.

"Because we're an existing charity we work with suppliers already. We think we can get our hands on, certainly for the first drop, a lot of hand sanitiser for people who really, really need it."

Ms Hughes said because of the coronavirus outbreak people are more able to relate to the idea of not being able to get items they need.

"This is the first time lots of us have looked at shelves and thought actually I need something and I can't have it, and so they're better able to relate to people living in poverty who feel like that quite a lot of the time.

"I think it's really important in times of crisis, when people are doing something positive it does make you feel a little bit calmer and more in control. It certainly does me.

"I do think the act of giving just makes us feel better. It feels as though we're doing something, we're part of a collective effort."

In Altrincham, Greater Manchester, Rachel Pleasant is recruiting volunteers to help local residents who are elderly, vulnerable or stuck at home without any family or friends nearby. She and two others set up a Facebook group on Saturday.

"Before we know it we've had 2,000 people join the page and 3,500 messages of support saying please let us help. It's been amazing."

They have got hold of ward maps of the local area and have been divvying up streets to volunteers, who will visit residents and offer to run errands or pick up supplies.

"I think we just felt panic never solves anything, let's focus some of that energy on really helping the people in our community."

Facebook said more than 200,000 people in the UK are now members of more than 300 local support groups set up for the virus.

Brie Rogers Lowery, from the social media site, said it was "heartening" to see people rallying round.

'Darrell's memory'

The family of 88-year-old Darrell Blackley, who died at North Manchester General Hospital on Friday after testing positive for coronavirus, have asked people to carry out acts of kindness in his memory.

"We invite you to forget flowers and cards," said the message, written on behalf of his family.

"Instead we would like you to give acts of kindness. Help someone who is lonely or struggling during this time, who needs shopping, childcare or a chat.

"Post tiny acts of kindness given and received and share. Build something beautiful in Darrell's memory."

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Ali Currie, from south London, said her two daughters, Scarlet, 10, and Grace, 12, posted handwritten notes to the houses on their road.

"They are pretty caring girls," she said. "We live in a really lovely neighbourhood which is full of great community spirit."

The family have received a few texts and handwritten notes in return and their elderly next door neighbour "said she will need some help at some point".

"It's been great to see kindness spread so fast and so far," said Becky Wass, whose separate postcard campaign aimed at helping people look out for their neighbours was shared widely on social media.

The postcard, which people can print at home, allows neighbours to offer to deliver shopping, drop off urgent supplies or talk on the phone, and gives the recipients their name and phone number to contact.

"The response has been incredible," said Ms Wass, from Falmouth in Cornwall. "I'm now hearing heartwarming stories from around the world about people connecting with their neighbours."

But it is not just thoughtful individuals who are helping others during the health crisis. Businesses - many of which are likely to suffer a hard time if social distancing measures increase - are also getting involved.

One hotel in Portaferry, County Down, said it is offering to deliver free dinners to elderly people who are unable to get to a supermarket or restaurant.

"These are unprecedented times and we are a close knit community; let's stick together and get through this together," the hotel said on Facebook.

Meanwhile, a grocers in Padstow is setting aside half an hour every day solely for shoppers who were born in 1950 or before.

The owner said he hoped it would give elderly shoppers "a little bit of peace of mind" in the fight against coronavirus.

Other cafes and shops are doing similar. A cafe in Glasgow's Southside is delivering soup to the elderly and people with underlying health issues, while a shop in Stenhousemuir is dropping off packages of hand gel to local pensioners.

The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has regularly expressed his gratitude to those trying to spread kindness.

He shared a video of a fitness instructor in Seville, in Spain, who held an exercise class for quarantined residents in an apartment block who joined in on their balconies.

"I am so impressed and inspired by all the examples of kindness and compassion people are showing around the world," said Dr Ghebreyesus.

"With this spirit, we can beat coronavirus."

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When, at the end of February, Lombardy and Veneto recorded Italy’s first local cases of transmission of coronavirus, the two regions quickly erected road blocks, establishing Europe’s first lockdown and a precedent for the rest of the continent.

Since then the fortunes of the two wealthy neighbours, which have some of the best-resourced health systems in Europe, have diverged.

Struck by a human catastrophe unseen in Europe outside of war, with military trucks taking away corpses from the city of Bergamo, Lombardy has a death rate of 17.6 per cent.

Nearby Veneto’s stands at 5.6 per cent. While virologists caution that the percentage death rate is closely tied to the level of testing, they also attribute the gap to other factors, such as Veneto’s reluctance to hospitalise compared with its neighbour.

“Veneto has a very low mortality compared to the rest of Italy,” said Professor Andrea Crisanti, a leading virologist from the University of Padua, in charge of a mass testing programme across Veneto. “This shows that our approach has worked well so far.”

As of Saturday Lombardy, which has a population of 10m people, accounts for 8,656, or 56.3 per cent, of Italy’s total declared deaths from the virus of 15,362. Meanwhile Veneto, which has a population of 4.9m, has suffered 607 official deaths out of 10,824 diagnosed cases.

Higher levels of testing and tracing in Veneto is the most widely cited explanation for why the region has managed to control its outbreak more effectively than its neighbours.

Editor’s note

The Financial Times is making key coronavirus coverage free to read to help everyone stay informed. Find the latest here.

Luca Zaia, governor of Veneto, was the first regional head in Italy to devise a widespread testing programme that involves drive-through swabs done in cars as well as tests in medical centres.

This went beyond World Health Organization guidance, which advises to test and trace suspected cases. On the advice of the region’s scientists, Veneto has to date conducted 133,289 tests as of Saturday, the second-highest in Italy after the 141,877 of Lombardy in spite of having half of its population.

Yet experts say testing is not the only reason for the lower death rate.

Venetian doctors also cite the region’s expertise in infectious disease, something they trace back to its pioneering history dealing with viruses arriving in its port from the east. The word quarantine derives from quarantena, the Venetian word for “40 days”, or the amount of time ships arriving from plague-ridden destinations were isolated.

For Giorgio Palù, one of Europe’s leading virologists, and scientific adviser to the governor of Veneto, a critical factor has been the number of diagnosed patients taken into hospital.

The number of diagnosed patients who were taken in hospitals for clinical treatment at the start of the outbreak was about 65 per cent in Lombardy, Prof Palù said.

This compares with 20 per cent in Veneto, where the majority were told to stay at home unless urgent care was required.

“There were different instructions given to the sick by the different regional health authorities,” he said. “Yes, there has been more testing in Veneto but people were kept at home and not taken into hospitals. The more patients you admit to the hospital, the more cases you get. You create the outbreak as at the start nobody was taking care of sampling the doctors or nurses, [so] you were taking home the infection.”

His observation comes as more than 60 Italian doctors and health workers have died, the majority of these in Lombardy. A group of doctors from the Papa Giovanni XXIII hospital in Bergamo warned last month that hospitals had become the main source of transmission of Covid-19 infections, and urged more patients to be treated at home.

“We are learning that hospitals might be the main Covid-19 carriers,” they wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine. “They are rapidly populated by infected patients, facilitating transmission to uninfected patients.”

The Veneto region has a large network of smaller health centres, which have been used to diagnose and treat patients in ways that have kept them out of large hospitals, said Prof Palù.

The fact that Lombardy has a greater proportion of private hospitals than Veneto also contributed to more Covid-19 patients ending up in hospitals, he argued. The Lombardy administration was also under political pressure, Prof Palù added.

“In Lombardy there were too many admissions from the primary side, where the triage was done. The Italian prime minister at the start criticised the hospitals in Lombardy, and it seems they responded by wanting to show they were treating people, not telling them to stay at home.”

Officials in Lombardy also said Rome should have done more. “I put my mask on on the television, and they insulted me and told me that I undermined Italy’s credibility,” said Lombardy’s governor Attilio Fontana this week. “Perhaps I should have been tougher in opposing the [central] government.” Late last month, Lombardy established teams of medics to monitor at home patients who had been discharged from hospital.

The mood in both regions is still sombre. “Have we committed errors? Of course we have,” said Giulio Gallera, Lombardy’s head of welfare last week. “We have always given our best to offer the many people who arrived in our hospitals the necessary care . . . we have done the best we could.”

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Democrats are insisting that the legislation require the Trump administration to establish a national testing strategy, but the president wants states to take responsibility.

WASHINGTON — A dispute between Democrats and the White House over how to handle coronavirus testing emerged on Monday as one of the most significant sticking points as negotiators struggled to finalize a nearly $500 billion bipartisan agreement to replenish a loan program for small businesses and provide more funding for hospitals and testing.

Democrats are pushing to include a requirement in the measure, which is likely to include $25 billion for testing, that the Trump administration establish a national testing strategy, a move the president and Republicans have resisted, insisting on leaving those decisions to each state.

The impasse hindering the latest round of federal aid to respond to the coronavirus pandemic reflects a broader disagreement over how to handle testing, a crucial element of the government response on which the Trump administration has been roundly criticized for falling short. President Trump and members of his team have boasted repeatedly about the amount of testing available and pressured governors to accelerate testing in their states. Governors have repeatedly appealed for more federal funding and other help — or, in the case of Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, taken matters into their own hands and negotiated with suppliers on their own to obtain test kits.

Democrats argue that a national testing strategy is crucial to combating the spread of the coronavirus and allowing states to plan for eventual reopening. But Republicans, wary of placing the political onus on the administration to devise and implement such a strategy, have argued that states should set their own plans.

And Mr. Trump appeared to reject the Democrats’ proposal on Monday, saying that they were “playing a very dangerous political game” by focusing on testing. “States, not the Federal Government, should be doing the Testing,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter.

Negotiators were also still haggling over the terms of the new aid for small businesses and hospitals, and a Democratic demand for funds for state and local governments. But despite the disagreements, leaders said a deal was in sight. The bulk of the money would be designated for the Paycheck Protection Program, which was created by the stimulus law approved last month and allows companies that keep paying their employees to receive forgivable loans underwritten by the federal government.

Congressional leaders and administration officials negotiated through the day on Monday, and Senate leaders scheduled a session for Tuesday afternoon, signaling optimism that they could resolve the issue and quickly approve the funds without a formal vote that would require senators to return to Washington.

“We’re getting closer,” Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, told reporters on Monday, donning a blue surgical mask as he departed the Capitol. Asked about the holdup, he said, “We’re still in discussions.”

Later on Monday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi told House Democrats during a conference call that she was hopeful a deal could be reached by the end of the night, according to two people familiar with the private conversation, who spoke about it on condition of anonymity. Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader, said that he was planning for a vote on Wednesday, but that it could slip to Thursday.

“We’re down to the fine print,” Ms. Pelosi said on CNN on Monday evening, adding that she remained “optimistic and hopeful that we’ll come to a conclusion tonight.”

Mr. Trump, speaking at a coronavirus task force briefing Monday evening, said that “tremendous progress” had been made, and that he hoped to see a Senate vote Tuesday.

But Democrats were continuing to insist on bolstering national testing efforts.

“Senate Democrats are fighting for our $30 billion plan for a comprehensive national testing strategy,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, said on Twitter. “Because we need major new investments to bolster the supply and manufacturing chain and significantly expand free testing for all, reporting and contact tracing.

The $349 billion initially provided for the small business loan program ran out on Thursday after Democrats blocked an effort to approve the administration’s request for $250 billion in new funding. Without the money, banks could no longer offer loans to small businesses, leaving millions of applications in limbo.

Mr. McConnell accused Democrats on Monday of “prolonging their discussions with the administration” and delaying a final agreement. “It is past time to get this done for the country,” he said.

While talks continued on Monday, lawmakers appeared to be coalescing around providing $310 billion to replenish the Paycheck Protection Program and reserving $60 billion of that for smaller financial institutions; adding $60 billion for the Small Business Administration’s disaster relief fund; and devoting an additional $75 billion for hospitals and $25 billion for testing. In addition to a broader testing policy, Democrats were also still pushing to include funds to assist state and local governments.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Mr. McConnell told Republican senators in a conference call Sunday afternoon that they would not include additional aid for state and local governments. Mr. Trump told reporters, “That will be in our next negotiation.”

Senate leaders are hoping to approve any deal during a procedural session to avoid having lawmakers come back to Washington before their scheduled May 4 return — a maneuver that would require agreement from all 100 senators. Mr. McConnell told reporters that he could not confidently say whether that was feasible until negotiators produced a compromise.

Some House Republicans have objected to the prospect of approving another sweeping increase in spending without a roll-call vote, and some Democrats have begun to register objections of their own, arguing that the emerging agreement does not provide enough aid.

“It is insulting to think that we can pass such a small amount of money — in the context of not knowing when Congress is even going to reconvene — pass such a small amount of money, pat ourselves on the back and leave town again,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, said on Monday.

“I’m not here with the luxury of time,” she added. “I need legislation that is going to save people’s lives.”

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — President Donald Trump sent a personal letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, seeking to maintain good relations and offering cooperation in fighting the coronavirus pandemic, Kim’s sister said Sunday.

The latest correspondence came as Kim observed the firing of tactical guided weapons over the weekend, drawing criticism from South Korea, as nuclear talks remain deadlocked.

In a statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA, Kim’s sister and senior ruling party official, Kim Yo Jong, praised Trump for sending the letter at a time when “big difficulties and challenges lie ahead in the way of developing ties” between the countries.

In the letter, she said Trump explained his plan to “propel the relations between the two countries . and expressed his intent to render cooperation in the anti-epidemic work,” an apparent reference to the global coronavirus outbreak. She said her brother expressed his gratitude for Trump’s letter.

North Korea has repeatedly said there hasn’t been a single case of the coronavirus on its soil. Some foreign experts question that claim and say an outbreak in the North could cause a humanitarian disaster because of its poor medical infrastructure. Last month, the State Department expressed concerns about North Korea’s vulnerability to a potential coronavirus outbreak and said it was ready to support efforts by aid organizations to contain the spread of the illness in the North.

A senior Trump administration official said Sunday that Trump sent a letter to Kim that the official said was consistent with Trump’s efforts to engage global leaders during the pandemic. The official said Trump looks forward to continued communications with the North Korean leader.

Kim Yo Jong said Trump’s letter is “a good example showing the special and firm personal relations” between the North Korean and U.S. leaders. But she said it’s not a good idea to “make hasty conclusion or be optimistic about” the prospect for bilateral relations.

“In my personal opinion, I think that the bilateral relations and dialogue for them would be thinkable only when the equilibrium is kept dynamically and morally and justice ensured between the two countries,” she said. “Even at this moment we are working hard to develop and defend ourselves on our own under the cruel environment which the U.S. is keen to ‘provide.’”

Earlier, Trump sent birthday greetings to Kim Jong Un, who was believed to have turned 36 on Jan. 8. Senior North Korean official Kim Kye Gwan said at the time that the birthday message won’t lead his country to return to talks unless the U.S. accepts its demands.

Kim and Trump have met three times and exchanged letters and envoys on many occasions since 2018, when they launched talks on the fate of Kim’s advancing nuclear arsenal. The two leaders have avoided harsh language against each other, and Trump once said he and Kim “fell in love.”

But their diplomacy has largely come to a standstill since the breakdown of their second summit in Vietnam in February 2019, when Trump rejected Kim’s demands for broad sanctions relief in return for a partial disarmament step.

Kim pressed Trump to come up with new proposals to salvage the negotiations by the end of last year. Kim later vowed to bolster his nuclear deterrent and unveil “a new strategic weapon,” and warned that he would no longer be bound by a major weapons test moratorium.

In recent weeks, North Korea has fired a slew of artillery and other rockets into the sea in what experts say is an attempt to improve its military capabilities. The weapons were all short range and did not pose a direct threat to the U.S. mainland. A resumption of long-range missile or nuclear weapons tests by Kim would likely completely scuttle diplomacy with Trump, experts say.

KCNA said Kim watched the test firing of tactical guided weapons on Saturday with Kim Yo Jong and other top officials. South Korea’s military called the demonstration “very inappropriate” at a time when the world is struggling with the coronavirus pandemic.

South Korea’s military said Saturday that it detected two presumed short-range ballistic missiles that flew from a site in western North Korea across the country and landed in the waters off the east coast. The weapons flew 410 kilometers (255 miles), according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Associated Press writer Jonathan Lemire in New York contributed to this report.

The North, which says it is waging an all-out campaign against the coronavirus, expressed “sincere gratitude” for the president’s letter.

SEOUL, South Korea — President Trump has sent a letter to North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, expressing his willingness to help the North battle the coronavirus, North Korea said on Sunday.

“I would like to extend sincere gratitude to the U.S. president for sending his invariable faith to the Chairman,” said Kim Yo-jong, the North Korean leader’s sister and policy aide, in a statement carried by the North’s state-run Korean​ Central​ News Agency. Ms. Kim lauded Mr. Trump’s decision to write the letter as “a good judgment and proper action.”

In the letter, Mr. Trump “wished the family of the Chairman and our people well-being,” Ms. Kim said, referring to her brother by one of his official titles.

According to Ms. Kim, Mr. Trump also explained his plan to move relations between the two countries forward and “expressed his intent to render cooperation in the anti-epidemic work, saying that he was impressed by the efforts made by the Chairman to defend his people from the serious threat of the epidemic.”

The White House confirmed that Mr. Trump had sent Mr. Kim a letter but did not comment on its specifics.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim have repeatedly touted their unusual relationship. They exchanged a number of personal letters before and after their first summit in Singapore in 2018, and at one point Mr. Trump said he and Mr. Kim had fallen “in love.”

But relations between Pyongyang and Washington ​have cooled since the leaders’ second summit meeting, held in Vietnam in February of last year, collapsed over differences regarding how quickly North Korea should dismantle its nuclear weapons program and when Washington should ease sanctions.

Since then, Mr. Kim has repeatedly said that North Korea was no longer interested in diplomacy with the United States unless it changed what he called its hostile policy, including sanctions. He also warned that the North no longer felt bound by its self-imposed moratorium on testing nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles​.

On Saturday, Mr. Kim attended the testing of two short-range ballistic missiles by ​his military.

Ms. Kim said on Sunday that her brother had “mentioned his special personal relations with President Trump again and appreciated the personal letter.” But she said good personal relations between the two leaders were not enough to improve their countries’ ties.

“We try to hope for the day when the relations between the two countries would be as good as the ones between the two top leaders, but it has to be left to time and be watched whether it can actually happen,” she said. “However, we will never lose or waste time for nothing, but will keep changing ourselves to be more powerful for that time just as how we made ourselves for the past two years.”

A senior Trump administration official, who insisted on anonymity, said the president’s letter was consistent with his efforts to engage world leaders during the coronavirus pandemic. The official said Mr. Trump looked forward to continued communications with Mr. Kim.

North Korea is highly vulnerable to epidemics because of the decrepit state of its public health system and the international sanctions imposed over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, which make it hard to ship aid there.

Officially, the North has reported no coronavirus cases, ​although it says it is waging an all-out campaign against the virus. ​ Outside health experts fear that the isolated country might be hiding an outbreak.

Katie Rogers contributed reporting from Washington.

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Three Texas A&M University policy experts hosted an online forum Tuesday evening and discussed a variety of topics related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs at the Bush School of Government and Public Service hosted the virtual discussion, during which the trio of academics stressed the continued importance of social distancing and noted that about 20 vaccine candidates are under examination — though testing and distribution of an eventual successful vaccine is almost certainly more than a year away.

The panelists also provided numerical updates and reflections on the multifaceted governmental responses in the United States and beyond, among other topics. The panel came as the U.S. neared 400,000 confirmed cases and 13,000 deaths from the coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Christine Crudo Blackburn, deputy director of the Pandemic and Biosecurity Policy Program at the Bush School, said several different types of potential treatments are under investigation.

She noted that the one most often discussed at present, hydroxychloroquine, is under a medical trial — with results potentially three to five months away.

“We need to be cautious about which treatments we want to go with before we know side effects or other implications,” Blackburn said. “Some of them look promising, but there is a process they have to go through to make sure that they are safe and effective.”

Gerald Parker, director of the Pandemic and Biosecurity Policy Program within the Bush School of Government and Public Service, said that even an 18-month time frame on discovery and eventual distribution of a vaccine would be scientifically “remarkable.”

Andrew Natsios, a Bush School professor who is the director of the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs, also provided data and analysis.

“We have not reached our peak yet,” Natsios said, echoing words from Brazos County Alternate Health Authority Dr. Seth Sullivan, who said in a Monday press conference that Brazos County’s overall trend of coronavirus cases continues to rise. Sullivan said a handful of recent models analyzed by health officials indicate that Brazos County’s number of COVID-19 cases may surge in the next two to six weeks.

“Just because New York reaches its peak over the next few weeks does not mean that that’s the end of it for the rest of the country. There will be rolling, cascading local outbreaks in the United States at different times,” Natsios said, noting the country’s large geographic size.

Natsios also noted that the federal system of government, with federal, state and local jurisdictions and officials, presents challenges in terms of presenting clear instructions for the nation’s residents on how to respond to the pandemic.

“Our system — because it’s so decentralized, because it’s a federal system — there are mixed messages. Sometimes the president says one thing and governors say a different thing, and that confuses people,” he said. “The public would like to know what they’re supposed to do.”

Parker provided both praise and criticism of the wide-scale pandemic responses to this point.

“I think the response has been nothing short of phenomenal across the board,” he said.

“We’re gonna look back and do some after-action and do some critiquing at the appropriate time, but right now, we need to stay focused going forward on making sure that we get on the other side of the peak, and that we jump-start the economy in a way that’s safe for our communities,” Parker said. “If I were to say that there is one strategic disappointment, though, I have to point to our laboratory testing capabilities. . We were slow out of the gate rolling out laboratory diagnostic capabilities.”

“Even before this current response, I wished that we as a society would’ve taken pandemic preparedness a little bit more seriously before this crisis began, because I think we all realize now that it is a national security issue — and going forward, I think we need to treat it as such,” he added.