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This was supposed to be a big year for America's meat industry. As recently as late February, a USDA livestock analyst predicted record-setting red meat and poultry production as economic growth and low unemployment boosted demand for animal protein.

Then came COVID-19. By the end of April, the pandemic changed the economic and agricultural landscape so drastically that Tyson Foods, one of America's biggest meat producers, warned in a full-page New York Times ad that the "food supply chain is breaking."

America's farms are still packed with animals raised for meat production. The problem is that the virus has made it increasingly hard to turn those animals into store-ready packs of pork chops or ground beef. That's because Tyson and many other meat processing companies across the country have paused operations at a number of plants where workers have tested positive for COVID-19. According to the USDA's weekly report from April 27, beef production was down nearly 25% year-over-year, while and pork production was down 15%.

In an effort to curb the problem, President Donald Trump signed an executive order on April 28 aiming to keep meat processing plants in operation. But many say Trump's order will be unlikely to eliminate the threat that COVID-19 poses to American meat processors, and, by extension, the food supply. It's hard, after all, to protect workers from a highly contagious virus in the frequently tight quarters of a processing plant. At least 20 meatpackers have already died from COVID-19, and more than 5,000 have been hospitalized or are showing symptoms, according to labor union United Food and Commercial Workers.

Meat processing companies say they're trying to find ways to keep workers safe. "We've been screening worker temperatures, requiring protective face coverings and conducting additional cleaning and sanitizing," said a Tyson spokesperson. "We've also implemented social distancing measures, such as workstation dividers and more breakroom space."

Still, experts warn that shoppers should prepare for meat to be more expensive, less varied and harder to find over the coming weeks and even months. Here's what you need to know before your next trip to the grocery store.

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Are there meat shortages? How long will the shortages last?

In the coming weeks, grocery stores may have a smaller variety of meat, and less meat overall.

Glynn Tonsor, a professor at Kansas State University's department of agricultural economics, says that whether or not you find meat on your next shopping trip could come down to timing — whether "you come in five minutes after the truck was unloaded, so to speak, verses 12 hours after it was unloaded," he says.

Tonsor thinks the problem will start to improve by June as meat processing plants find ways to operate in a COVID-19 world.

But some meat supply issues could linger for a year or more, warns David Anderson, professor and extension economist in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Texas A&M University. That's because meat processing facilities could struggle to keep production lines moving as workers get sick.

"I think the average purchaser's going to notice it," says Anderson. "I suspect that consumers will note that in the meat case in their store, there won't be as much as normal, or as they used to see. You'll see parts of the meat case where there's less there, you'll see parts of the meat case, probably, where they spread out the product — so it looks full."

Could meat products become more expensive?

Most likely. We could see higher meat prices for at least the rest of the year, Anderson says.

"In terms of the animals produced, we've got ample supplies, huge supplies," he says. "The bottleneck is in packing and processing. What that means is higher prices for consumers."

Tonsor says some customers may find themselves spending more of their grocery budget than usual on meat, or they may find it too expensive altogether.

But some stores, he says, may choose not to pass on the higher costs to consumers, in order to incentivize them to come and spend money on other goods. They could also phase-in price increases to soften the blow over time.

Still, some consumers will likely be forced into exploring alternative cheaper protein sources, like beans or tofu, especially as millions of Americans find themselves out of work amid the wider economic slowdown.

Which meat products might be affected?

The most popular meat products, like ground beef and bacon, are especially likely to rise in price, says Tonsor. But the price of less popular items, like tongue, may not rise as much.

Items that go through special steps (like flavoring) or products that are handled in dedicated facilities (like organic or grass-fed meats) may be more vulnerable to price hikes as well, he says.

Some meats may increase in price more quickly than others. Pigs are bred more quickly than cattle, for instance, making it easier to adjust their production levels.

Also: get your own spices and rubs ready. "I expect flavored wings to be harder to get your hands on regularly than plain, boneless chicken breast," Tonsor says.

Could President Trump's executive order improve the situation?

While President Trump's executive order is aimed at motivating meat processing plants to stay in operation, whether or not that's actually possible will come down to workers, not management. If workers fall ill or are concerned enough for their own safety that they choose not to return, it won't matter if plants re-open or not.

"These are skilled jobs," says Tonsor. "You can't just overnight replace worker A with worker B."

That workers could be eligible for the enhanced unemployment insurance passed amid the COVID-19 crisis could also factor into their thinking, says Dermot Hayes, pioneer chair in agribusiness at Iowa State University.

"Nobody knows how the workers are going to respond to a request to come back to work. Until somebody tries to reopen a plant and get that to happen, we really can't say," says Hayes. "There will be a tension between the owners of the plants who want to operate, and the workers who want to be on redundancy."

Why has this order been put in place?

Trump's executive order shows just how economically and politically important meat is in America.

"I think this announcement just reaffirms how important a well-functioning, flowing meat and livestock system is in America," says Tonsor. He points out that meat helps fuel the market for feed crops, bolsters rural banks, and, through property taxes, funds programs like K-through-12 education.

Meat also has major symbolic value with many Americans, says Joshua Specht, the author of Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America and a visiting assistant professor of history at the University of Notre Dame. Its rarity or absence, he says, would send yet another signal that COVID-19 is upending life as we have known it.

"If things that we rely on as staples — even if they're not strictly necessary for survival, like meat — if we don't have access to that, people will be very upset," says Specht. "If there are shortages, they'll resonate. In terms of the executive order, what that's basically a recognition of is that this is the kind of thing that could have serious political consequences. And if you want to convince the public that the pandemic is under control, you don't want them having some sort of thing they experience very directly."

Specht says that he's concerned to see mounting political pressure to reopen meat processing plants alongside reports of workers falling sick and dying. Such workers often have little political power, limited access to health care and similar services, and often need to keep working to stay afloat financially, he says. But he adds that there could be reasonably safe ways to keep virus-stricken plants in at least partial operation.

"If we spread [workers] out more, your options are lower line speed — and that means lower production — or pushing the workers that remain harder and harder," he says. "And so that's another way that there aren't easy answers here. Something is going to have to give in that system."

Please send any tips, leads, and stories to virus@time.com.

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(WASHINGTON) — More than 3.8 million laid-off workers applied for unemployment benefits last week as the U.S. economy slid further into a crisis that is becoming the most devastating since the 1930s.

Roughly 30.3 million people have now filed for jobless aid in the six weeks since the coronavirus outbreak began forcing millions of employers to close their doors and slash their workforces. That is more people than live in the New York and Chicago metropolitan areas combined, and it's by far the worst string of layoffs on record. It adds up to more than one in six American workers.

With more employers cutting payrolls to save money, economists have forecast that the unemployment rate for April could go as high as 20%. That would be the highest rate since it reached 25% during the Great Depression.

This week, the government estimated that the economy shrank at a 4.8% annual rate in the first three months of this year, the sharpest quarterly drop since the 2008 financial crisis. Yet the picture is likely to grow far worse: The economy is expected to contract in the April-June quarter by as much as 40% at an annual rate. No previous quarter has been anywhere near as weak since the government began keeping such records after World War II.

As businesses across the country have shut down and laid off tens of millions of workers, the economy has sunk into a near-paralysis in just a few weeks. Factories, hotels, restaurants, department stores, movie theaters and many small businesses are shuttered. Home sales are falling. Households are slashing spending. Consumer confidence is sinking.

With some signs that the viral outbreak may have plateaued at least in certain areas of the country, a few governors have taken tentative steps to begin reopening their economies. But surveys show that a large majority of Americans remain wary of returning to shopping, traveling and other normal economic activity. That suggests that many industries will struggle with diminished revenue for weeks or months to come and might be unable to rehire laid-off workers.

Elon Musk went on a profane rant during another emotive Tesla Inc. earnings call, excoriating stay-at-home orders that are putting the electric-car maker's red-hot run at risk.

"This is fascist. This is not democratic, this is not freedom," the chief executive officer said after reporting Tesla's first-ever profit to start a year. "Give people back their godd— freedom."

Tesla is worried about being able to resume production in the San Francisco Bay area, where authorities have extended a stay-home order to the end of May. The Model 3 maker's only assembly plant in the U.S. still produces the vast majority of the company's cars and has been idlesince March 23.

Investors shrugged off the outburst, with Tesla shares finishing the late trading session up 8.7%. The company's third straight quarterly profit and revenue of almost $6 billion beat analysts' estimates, extending an advance for a stock that's already the biggest gainer on the Nasdaq 100 Stock Index this year.

"It was vintage Elon. I wish he hadn't done it," Gene Munster, managing partner at Loup Ventures, said by phone. "But most investors don't care. It doesn't change the reality, which is that Tesla is making meaningful progress toward being a major player in the auto industry."

The stock surge Musk, 48, has engineered by producing and delivering more cars than expected early this year has positioned him to receive the first set of stock options from a pay package that set moonshot goals two years ago.

By continuing to build up the shares, bulls are overlooking uncertainty about how soon the company will be able to resume production at its sole U.S. vehicle-assembly plant in Fremont, California, or how eager consumers will be to purchase Tesla cars once health orders are loosened and lifted.

"We are a bit worried about not being able to resume production in the Bay area, and that should be identified as a serious risk," Musk told an analyst. He said shelter-in-place orders are "forcibly imprisoning people in their homes, against all their constitutional rights" and "breaking people's freedoms in ways that are horrible and wrong."

"It will cause great harm, not just to Tesla, but to many companies," Musk added. "While Tesla will weather the storm, there are many small companies that will not. Everything people have worked for their whole life is being destroyed in real time, and we have many suppliers that are having super-hard times, especially the small ones. It's causing a lot of strife to a lot of people."

During the debut quarter for the new Model Y crossover, automotive gross margin improved to 25.5%, the highest in a year and a half.

While Tesla stopped short of restating its January forecast for deliveries to "comfortably" exceed 500,000 vehicles this year, the company said it believes it can achieve industry-leading operating margins and profitability.

"Gross margin was mostly the thing that sticks out to me on the positive side," Ben Kallo, an analyst at Robert W. Baird with the equivalent of a hold rating on Tesla, said by phone. "On the question-mark side, I have to wonder why they didn't talk about demand at all."

Tesla managed to build about 14,000 more vehicles than it handed over to customers in the quarter, despite being forced to suspend production at its factory in California late last month. Inventory build-up led the company to burn through about $895 million in cash during the period. Tesla still ended March with $8.1 billion on its balance sheet after raising money through a stock offering in February.

Musk will postpone initial deliveries of Tesla's Semi truck again to 2021 — roughly two years later than initially planned — as the company prioritizes starting output of the Model Y crossover in Shanghai and building a factory in Germany from which it aims to begin shipping cars in the middle of next year.

"Tesla investors are looking past the June quarter," Dan Ives, a Wedbush analyst who rates the stock a hold, said by phone. "The bulls could take this and run."

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On March 23, U.S. stock markets closed the day after a multi-week plunge of nearly 30%. This drop coincided with a wave of lockdowns across the country, as well as similar moves throughout Europe, Latin America and South Asia. Since then, the U.S. economy has been in free-fall, with more than 26 million people filing for unemployment, waves of retail stores on the edge of bankruptcy, energy and oil companies teetering on the brink, travel grounded, and the GDP was down 4.8% in the first quarter and this quarter is likely to be much worse. The stock market? Overall, stocks are up across all indices more than 30% from that low point in late March.

What is going on? How can it be that stocks are soaring when the economy is crashing? Market movements are often head-scratching, but in this case, the answer may be relatively simple: because of moves by the Federal Reserve, financial markets are awash in money, vast, water-hose supplies of money. Since March, the Fed has committed to lend or buy trillions of dollars of financial assets, which by some estimates might end up exceeding $8 trillion dollars by the time all is said and done. No one knows how high that figure will climb. By way of comparison, during the last financial crisis in 2008-2009, the Fed ended up adding about $3 trillion over the course of several years.

And it's not just the Fed. Congress has allocated almost $3 trillion in economic aid; the Bank of Japan is doing much the same as the Fed for the world's third largest economy; the European Central Bank is not far behind, and multiple governments around the world are following suit.

The result is that even as real-world economies freeze and implode in the short-term, financial markets are buoyed by a tsunami of liquidity.

That troubles many investors, who see either sharp spikes of inflation or dire reckoning ahead for stocks and bonds. Respected investor Jeffery Gundlach, one of the most influential bond managers, warned this week that markets will soon head south fast and the people should be more "wary of panaceas." Analysts at Bank America posit that the recent market strength is simply a dead-cat bounce like what happened in 2008 before a more intense crash later that year. Others believe that all the liquidity in the world cannot compensate for the collapse of real-world economic activity and these moves by the Fed and governments are the equivalent of flooding a drought stricken area with water for a few days. It feels like a relief, but if there is no rain in the months after, it does little good.

And yet, there is something else going on that should give pause to the belief that market strength is a head fake. If it were only about a sea of money floating everything, then you would think that stocks across the board would be going up. That is not the case.

In fact, there is a dramatic difference in how individual companies are faring that reflects a cold-eyed assessments of how they will do in a pandemic world. Companies that are seen as especially vulnerable, such as retail stores spread across malls, are seeing stock declines of 50% and have only recovered marginally since March 23. The Gap, Macy's, Michael Kors, all face daunting prospects, and no amount of liquidity in financial markets will paper that over. Energy companies, with plunging demand for oil and high debt loads, are in some cases on the verge of bankruptcy, and even the survivors like oil service giant Schlumberger (based in Houston) has seen its stock more than halved since March. The same is true for airlines and hotels. Yes, JetBlue's planes will eventually fly and have passengers, but there is no guarantee that they will be operated by a company called JetBlue two years from now.

On the flip side, clear beneficiaries of the current upheaval are doing well. Five mega-tech companies – Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Google – alone make up $5 trillion of market cap, and Amazon in particular has seen its stock go up more than 30% since mid-March. Costco and Clorox have seen booming business along with Walmart, as has the video conference company Zoom.

So while markets are not moving on real-time economic fundamentals, they are moving on reasonable judgements of fundamentals going forward and distinguishing between industries that look to be hardest hits from those that might even benefit from the dramatic economic dislocations that COVID-19 responses are creating. If everything were going up indiscriminately, that would indicate markets were fully detached. There are not.

And for those who – understandably – might see all of this as yet further proof that once again, the financial world will get saved at the expense of tens of millions of real people and millions of small companies will get sacrificed, this time it is different. The Fed, for instance, is committed to purchasing hundreds of billions of dollars of municipal bonds at favorable rates, which will mean that cash-strapped state governments should be able to retain teachers and policemen and programs even if Congress proves negligent as Mitch McConnell seems to be pushing for. That will mean that pensions for public servants remain intact. The Fed also is about to lend another $500 billion to Main Street businesses, which is coming too late to avoid the pain of the last month but will still matter greatly to the ability of companies to move forward and eventually rehire. The most visible effect of the money in motion now is the stock market, but that will be not the sole beneficiary as more Fed money flows to states and Main Street.

So while it appears crazy that markets are doing relatively well as the world economy burns down, there is a method to the madness that reflects some potentially positive realities of an otherwise dire time. That may be small comfort just now, but it is a clear reminder that as bad as things are just now, they actually could be considerably worse.

President Donald Trump plans to order meat-processing plants to remain open, declaring them critical infrastructure as the nation confronts growing disruptions to the food supply from the coronavirus outbreak, a person familiar with the matter said.

Trump plans to use the Defense Production Act to order the companies to stay open during the pandemic, and the government will provide additional protective gear for employees as well as guidance, according to the person.

Trump signaled the executive action at the White House on Tuesday, saying he planned to sign an order aimed at Tyson Foods Inc.'s liability, which had become "a road block" for the company. He didn't elaborate.

The order, though, will not be limited to Tyson, the person said. It will affect many processing plants supplying beef, chicken, eggs and pork.

Trump's order sets the stage for a showdown between America's meat giants, who've been pressing to reopen plants hit by mass outbreaks, and local officials and labor unions who've called for closures and are trying to prevent the virus from spreading. The president himself has long agitated for Americans to return to work and restore a U.S. economy crippled by social distancing measures.

The White House decided to make the move amid estimates that as much as 80% of U.S. meat production capacity could shut down. Meat stocks rose on the news.

'Breaking' Supply Chain

Tyson Foods extended gains, jumping as much as 5.6% for the biggest intraday advance in three weeks. Hormel Foods Corp. rose 1%, while JBS SA's American depositary receipts climbed 4.6%.

On Sunday, Tyson Foods Chairman John Tyson said in a blog post that the U.S. food supply chain "is breaking," with millions of pounds of meat set to "disappear" as plants close.

Illnesses in the meat-processing industry and shifts in demand after restaurants closed have disrupted the supply chain. Dairy farmers are dumping milk that can't be sold to processors, broiler operations have been breaking eggs to reduce supplies and some fruit and vegetables are rotting in fields amid labor and distribution disruptions.

Many low-income Americans, meanwhile, have been waiting in long lines at food banks, which have reported shortages.

Asked about the country's food supply, Trump said: "There's plenty of supply."

The Defense Production Act allows the government broad power to direct industrial production in crises. Trump has previously invoked the law — or threatened to invoke it — in order to increase the supply of medical gear including ventilators, masks and swabs to test for coronavirus infection.

The White House has been discussing the order with meatpacking executives to determine what they need to operate safely and stay open, in order to prevent shortages, the person said. White House General Counsel Pat Cipollone worked with private companies to design a federal mandate to keep the plants open and to provide them additional virus testing capacity as well as protective gear.

Trump acted one day after Iowa's two U.S. senators and its governor urged the administration to invoke the DPA to keep meatpackers open and reopen closed facilities "as soon as it is possible to do so safely." Iowa produces one-third of the nation's pork supply, according to the state officials.

The officials also asked for federal assistance in euthanizing pigs and reimbursing hog farmers for their losses due to closures of processing facilities.

Sick Workers

Across the country, at least 6,500 meat processing employees have been impacted by the virus, meaning they either tested positive for the disease or had to go into self-quarantine, according to the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, the largest private-sector union. Twenty workers have died.

At least 22 meat plants have closed within the past two months, reducing pork processing capacity by 25% and beef processing capacity by 10%, according to UFCW. Farmers have animals with nowhere to go as a result, and the situation is so dire that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is setting up a center to help growers with "depopulation and disposal methods" for animals.

Experts have warned the U.S. could be just weeks away from fresh meat shortages. While inventories can provide some cushion, stockpiles are limited.

Total American meat supplies in cold-storage facilities are equal to roughly two weeks of production. With most plant shutdowns lasting about 14 days for safety reasons, that further underscores the potential for deficits.

And the shutdowns are happening at a time when global meat supplies were already tight. China, the world's top hog producer, has been battling an outbreak of African swine fever, which destroyed millions of the country's pigs.

— With assistance from Mike Dorning.

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(NEW YORK) — The billions of dollars in coronavirus relief targeted at small businesses may not prevent many of them from ending up in bankruptcy court.

Business filings under Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy law rose sharply in March, and attorneys who work with struggling companies are seeing signs that more owners are contemplating the possibility of bankruptcy.

Companies forced to close or curtail business due to government attempts to stop the virus's spread have mounting debts and uncertain prospects for returning to normal operations. Even those owners receiving emergency loans and grants aren't sure that help will be enough.

The most vulnerable companies include the thousands of restaurants and retailers that shut down, many of them more than a month ago. Some restaurants have managed to bring in a bit of revenue by serving meals for takeout and delivery, but even they are struggling financially. Small and independent retailers, including those with online stores. are similarly at risk; clothing retailers have the added problem of winter inventory that they are unlikely to sell with spring here and summer approaching.

Independent oil companies whose revenue was slammed by the collapse in energy prices also are strapped, as are other companies that were already burdened with high debt levels before the virus struck.

Jennifer Bennett, who closed one of her San Francisco restaurants on Wednesday, was still waiting for the financial aid she sought from the federal, state and city governments. Even with the money, she doesn't know if the revenue will cover the bills when she's finally able to reopen Zazie — especially if she's required to space tables six feet apart for social distancing.

"Our occupancy is going to be cut 60% to 65%," Bennett says. "I fear bankruptcy is a possibility."

Other small companies have similar anxieties, says Paul Singerman, a bankruptcy attorney with Berger Singerman in Miami.

"There is no reliable visibility into when business operations will be able to resume the pre-COVID normal," Singerman says.

Even larger companies are in trouble, including already struggling retailers who had to shut their stores.

The jeans company True Religion filed for Chapter 11 earlier this month, saying extended closures of its stores in the pandemic have hurt its business. Recent reports say department store chains Neiman Marcus and J.C. Penney, which has struggled for years with slumping sales, could soon file for bankruptcy protection.

The number of Chapter 11 filings rose 18 percent in March from a year earlier, a dramatic swing from the 20 percent decrease in February, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute, a trade organization for attorneys and other professionals involved in bankruptcy proceedings. The numbers don't break out filings by company size, but given that the vast majority of companies are small to mid-size, it does give an indication that smaller companies are struggling.

The federal government has already approved or given out more than 2 million loans and grants to small businesses totaling nearly $360 billion; another $310 billion is on the way to one of the programs. Still, the money may be at best a stopgap for companies with little to no revenue coming in. And the new funds are expected to go so quickly that thousands of owners won't get loans.

There's no way to predict how many companies will file for bankruptcy. There were over 160,000 bankruptcy filings from 2008 to 2010, during the Great Recession and its aftermath, according to statistics compiled by the federal court system. The numbers don't break out filings by company size. The majority were for liquidations. although some companies restructured their debt and continued operating under Chapter 11.

Many companies, however, just shut their doors, and that's likely to be the case again, Singerman says. According to some estimates, 170,000 companies failed during the recession.

But the Small Business Reorganization Act, which took effect in February, may encourage more companies to seek Chapter 11. The law is aimed at allowing owners to retain their ownership rather than lose their companies to their creditors; that is generally what happens in Chapter 11. The law also streamlines the reorganization process so a company is not wiped out by attorneys' fees, says Edward Janger, a professor at Brooklyn Law School in New York whose expertise includes bankruptcy law.

Another change under the law is that a bankruptcy judge can approve the reorganization over creditors' objections, Janger says.

Business owners will try to avoid bankruptcy by seeking leniency from landlords, lenders and vendors, bankruptcy attorney David Wander says. But with their companies' financial troubles beyond their control because of the virus outbreak, many will file for Chapter 11 because the stigma that bankruptcy has long held will be gone, says Wander, a partner at Davidoff Hutcher & Citron in New York.

"The tsunami is going to happen in the coming months and it's going to be ongoing," Wander says.

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Thuy Petersen never expected to start a small business during a pandemic. Just a few months ago, she was focused on opening her company — a children's play and learning space called House of Playful Soul in Forest Hills, Queens — and taking care of her newborn.

But her plans, like those of so many across the world, were upended by the COVID-19 outbreak. After the 39-year-old entrepreneur spoke to a friend who's an emergency room doctor at nearby Elmhurst Hospital — a coronavirus hotspot — she decided to temporarily close her business just a week after it opened, in order to help keep her community safe.

Petersen says the hardest part of shutting down was letting her staff go. She knew they needed the money, and had been counting on her. "Never, never, never did I think that I'd have to let them go because we weren't going to be open," she says. "I purposefully spent so much time going over projections and forecasting to make sure that I could cover the employees that we were going to take on."

She tried to apply for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), an emergency federal loan program meant to help small businesses keep paying their employees. But the program, which was signed into law as part of the CARES Act on March 27, ran out of money startlingly quickly, before Petersen and many like her saw even a dime.

On Friday, President Trump signed into law a measure refunding the PPP program with $310 billion in additional lending authority. The fresh funding round means small business owners like Petersen will have a second chance at getting a loan that could help them keep their companies afloat, and, crucially, pay the people who were counting on her.

Petersen fears she's "low on the totem poll" at her bank, and will be unlikely to get any money even this time. But experts say she and other small business owners left out of the first round would be wise to try again — and the sooner they act, the better their odds of receiving help may be.

Here's what small business owners need to know about the Paycheck Protection Program's second round.

How do I apply for a loan through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)?

Small business owners who have not yet applied for the Paycheck Protection Program should apply through an eligible lender, like a local bank. The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has a list of eligible lenders that you can view here.

Experts say business owners should apply through a bank with whom they have a standing relationship, like one where they have a corporate account or have taken a loan from. That's because banks are already in overdrive helping their existing clients manage the COVID-19 crisis, and may be less able to work with new partners. Banks must also vet new customers, which takes time.

"There will be some banks out there that will accept new customers and get them into the PPP program," says LJ Suzuki, founder of CFO Share, which provides finance and accounting services for small and mid-size businesses. But, he adds, "the vast majority of banks will not, small or large. There are just too many moving parts, there are just too many urgent issues that they're dealing with. And they're prioritizing their current customers."

Applicants must submit a SBA Form 2483 (Paycheck Protection Program Application Form) and payroll documentation; more information can be found at the SBA's FAQ page.

Is there anything different about this round of PPP loans?

The new bill is largely similar to the old legislation, but $60 billion of this round is specifically targeted at small and mid-size banks, as well as credit unions, with about $30 billion set aside for community-based lenders, including Community Development Institutions and Minority Depository Institutions. Those changes were put into place after critics of the first round said that too much money was being funneled to larger businesses, like major restaurant chains, rather than truly small companies.

Steven Hamilton, assistant professor of economics at The George Washington University, says it's difficult to say ahead of time whether the changes in the second round will actually make it easier for small businesses to get PPP loans. But, he says, "it can't hurt." He adds that, now that companies with more clout have already received PPP loans, there's reason to believe the next round will go to smaller, less connected firms. Some larger companies may also be reluctant to apply for this round of funding, given the public relations fallout facing larger companies that took PPP money (the parent company of Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, for example, said it would return $20 million in loans after public criticism).

In updated guidance published April 23, the SBA emphasized that companies that apply for PPP loans must certify that they have a real need for the money. "It is unlikely that a public company with substantial market value and access to capital markets will be able to make the required certification in good faith, and such a company should be prepared to demonstrate to SBA, upon request, the basis for its certification," the agency said.

The new bill also makes farmers and agricultural companies with fewer than 500 employees eligible for Economic Injury Disaster Loans, an SBA program that loans money to small businesses in crisis.

How much loan money can my small business get?

Through the PPP, businesses with up to 500 employees (and some other companies) can receive a loan for 2.5 times their monthly payroll costs, up to $10 million. The loan can be forgiven if businesses use at least 75% of the forgiven amount for payroll, and if the money is used for payroll, interest on mortgages, rent and utilities.

Small business owners who have trouble getting a PPP loan should investigate other options, too. Todd McCracken, president of the National Small Business Association, recommends the SBA's Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, which is receiving an additional $50 billion through the new legislation and can cover expenses like payroll and rent.

"They're not forgivable, but there's a low interest rate and good repayment terms," says McCracken. "So for companies that feel optimistic about their long-term future, [but] they need some help right now, a loan might make sense."

Will this round of PPP loans meet all the demand?

Probably not. While many additional businesses will likely get PPP funding this time around, some businesses will likely be left behind — especially those that did not have a preexisting relationship with a bank, are slow to apply to the program, or are new, like Petersen's business.

Hamilton, the economics professor, says that while there's a "huge amount of additional money available," small business owners should know that "we don't know if it will last." His advice? "Get there as quickly as you can," he says.

Hamilton adds that he believed from the beginning that the PPP's initial $349 billion in funding would be insufficient. He estimated that covering all payrolls for businesses with fewer than 500 employees would take about $600 billion, assuming every single firm borrowed the maximum possible amount.

Even still, Hamilton was shocked when the original funding ran out in just two weeks. To him, that was a sign that PPP money is leaking away — likely, he believes, due to loopholes in the program allowing firms not traditionally thought of as small businesses to access PPP loans.

"Given that we know the set of firms is larger than we originally expected, even 600 billion in total is likely to be underfunded," says Hamilton. "We don't know how much it's underfunded. It's very difficult to know that number. The rules of the scheme are so complicated — it's very difficult to determine exactly which firms are eligible, [and] therefore to determine how much money we're going to need to cover all of those."

Even substantial PPP loans may not be enough money to help some small businesses survive in the long term. The program is only intended to cover payroll costs for eight weeks, and it remains unclear how long many businesses will remain shuttered or otherwise limited amid the COVID-19 outbreak.

Some experts also say that PPP is less helpful for extremely small businesses with only a few employees, especially if they spend more on costs like rent rather than payroll.

I applied for a PPP loan during the last round, but I never received money. Do I need to apply again?

Most businesses that have already applied for PPP should not need to re-apply. However, small business owners should contact the bank they're working with to double-check that their documents are in order and the status of their application. Any necessary changes could push applicants to the back fo the line, says Suzuki.

"A lot of the banks have maintained the order that the queue was in, and as soon as it's signed by the President, they will start processing things again," he says. "The people that had their applications in and were prepared last time but just got cut off early will be able to get processed without additional work."

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(WASHINGTON) — More than 4.4 million laid-off workers applied for U.S. unemployment benefits last week as job cuts escalated across an economy that remains all but shut down, the government said Thursday.

Roughly 26 million people have now filed for jobless aid in the five weeks since the coronavirus outbreak began forcing millions of employers to close their doors. About one in six American workers have now lost their jobs since mid-March, by far the worst string of layoffs on record. Economists have forecast that the unemployment rate for April could go as high as 20%.

The enormous magnitude of job cuts has plunged the U.S. economy into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Some economists say the nation's output could shrink by twice the amount that it did during the Great Recession, which ended in 2009.

The painful economic consequences of the virus-related shutdowns have sparked angry protests in several state capitals from crowds demanding that businesses reopen. Some governors have begun easing restrictions despite warnings from health authorities that it may be too soon to do so without sparking new infections. In Georgia, gyms, hair salons and bowling alleys can reopen Friday. Texas has reopened its state parks.

Yet those scattered re-openings won't lead to much rehiring, especially if Americans are too wary to leave their homes. Most people say they favor stay-at-home orders and believe it won't be safe to lift social distancing guidelines anytime soon. And there are likely more layoffs to come from many small businesses that have tried but failed to receive loans from a federal aid program.

The total number of people who are receiving unemployment benefits has reached a record 16 million, surpassing a previous high of 12 million set in 2010, just after the 2008-2009 recession ended. This figure reflects people who have managed to navigate the online or telephone application systems in their states, have been approved for benefits and are actually receiving checks.

In some states, many laid-off workers have run into obstacles in trying to file applications for benefits. Among them are millions of freelancers, contractors, gig workers and self-employed people — a category of workers who are now eligible for unemployment benefits for the first time.

"This has been a really devastating shock for a lot of families and small businesses," said Aaron Sojourner, a labor economist at the University of Minnesota. "It is beyond their control and no fault of their own."

Just about every major industry has absorbed sudden and severe layoffs. Economists at the Federal Reserve estimate that hotels and restaurants have shed the most jobs — 4 million since Feb. 15. That is nearly one-third of all the employees in that industry.

Construction has shed more than 9% of its jobs. So has a category that includes retail, shipping and utilities, the Fed estimated. A category that is made up of data processing and online publishing has cut 4.7.

When the government issues the April jobs report on May 8, economists expect it to show breathtaking losses. Economists at JPMorgan are predicting a loss of 25 million jobs. That would be nearly triple the total lost during the entire Great Recession period.

A $2 trillion-plus federal relief package that was signed into law last month made millions of gig workers, contractors and self-employed people newly eligible for unemployment aid. But most states have yet to approve unemployment applications from those workers because they're still trying to reprogram their systems to do so. As a result, many people who have lost jobs aren't being counted as laid-off because their applications for unemployment aid are still pending.

Among them is Sasha McVeigh, a musician in Nashville. Having grown up in England with a love of country music, she spent years flying to Nashville to play gigs until she managed to secure a green card and move permanently two years ago. McVeigh had been working steadily until the city shut down music clubs in mid-March.

Since then, she's applied for unemployment benefits but so far has received nothing. To make ends meet, she's applied for some grants available to out-of-work musicians, held some live streaming concerts and pushed her merchandise sales.

By cutting expenses to a bare minimum, McVeigh said, "I've managed to just about keep myself afloat." But she worries about what will happen over the next few months.

Like many Americans, 62-year-old Larry Dansky of Ashland, Ore., has been anxiously awaiting his family's stimulus payment, a bit of extra income that could help pay the bills amid an unprecedented economic slowdown. But when he logged on to the IRS' website to track his payment, he was alarmed to see it had been deposited into an old account that he had shut down last summer to get the bonus from opening a new one.

"I was kind of devastated because it [felt] like, 'here comes a rescue ship,' and it keeps on going by," said Dansky. His bank rejected the payment and sent it back to the IRS, and he should eventually receive his stimulus payment as a paper check in the mail. However, the mailing address the IRS has on file for him is tied to a motel 140 miles from where he lives now. He said he called up someone at the front desk and offered them $50 to let him know when it comes. Then he'll make the trek to pick it up.

The one-time stimulus payments are a tentpole of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, which is meant to prop up the economy amid the coronavirus pandemic. Americans who aren't listed as dependents and whose income falls within a certain range can qualify for up to $1,200, or $2,400 for married couples filing jointly, as well as $500 per child under 17 years old. But many, like Dansky, are facing issues with receiving their payment.

Here's a look at some of the problems being reported with the stimulus payments, and what's being done to address those issues.

Some payments were sent to closed accounts

Tony Papatyi, a 56-year-old father in Omaha, Neb., told TIME that he and his 22-year-old daughter decided to separate their finances after she graduated from nursing school. They filed their 2019 taxes separately, got their returns sent to their joint bank account, and then closed the account. But Papatyi, like many others who have recently written to TIME, suspects their payments will be sent to that closed account, just as they were for Dansky.

If you filed your 2018 or 2019 tax return with direct deposit information, the IRS will use that information to deposit your stimulus payment directly in your bank account. The agency says that if it attempts to use direct deposit but an account is closed, the bank will reject the deposit, and the IRS will mail you a paper check with the address it has on file for you. However, paper checks may take weeks longer to arrive than direct deposits. Regardless of how the IRS sends your stimulus payment, it will also send a letter to the mailing address it has on file for you to let you know "how the payment was made and how to report any failure to receive the payment," according to its website.

A new IRS online tool called Get My Payment allows people to track their stimulus check, as well as send the IRS their direct deposit information if they did not include it in their recent tax returns. However, if the site says that your payment has already been processed, you won't be able to change your direct deposit information.

The Get My Payment site has some known issues, including a message that mistakenly told some users that payments rejected by banks were being re-sent to the same account. Those payments "are actually being mailed to the taxpayers," a Treasury Department spokesperson told TIME. "The IRS has quickly taken steps to correct this reporting error. Get My Payment will be updated starting Tuesday, April 21 to reflect that the taxpayer's payment has actually been mailed; not rerouted to a closed bank account."

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Some payments were sent to the wrong accounts

"Several million people" who filed their taxes through tax preparation services like H&R Block and TurboTax were unable to get their payments last week because of confusion around their direct deposit information, The Washington Post reports.

The issue appears tied to "refund transfers," sometimes called Refund Anticipation Loans (RALs) or a Refund Anticipation Check (RAC). Through these offerings, tax prep companies give people their refund more quickly, minus a fee, said Francine Lipman, a professor specializing in tax law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The money is sent to users via direct deposit or on a debit card mailed to them. The tax prep companies then set up a temporary bank account to collect the user's full tax refund, often weeks later. More than 20 million households used this option when filing their taxes in 2017, according to The National Center on Law & Elder Rights.

The Treasury Department told TIME on April 17 that the IRS didn't have direct deposit information for tax filers who used a refund transfer and received their money on a debit card. As of April 22, the IRS' website says that some of these filers' payments may have been sent to the bank account or debit card tied to their tax prep company.

An H&R Block spokesperson told TIME that the IRS "has bank account information for all H&R Block clients who received tax refunds electronically, and is determining when and how stimulus payments are distributed."

"[The IRS] has created confusion by not always using clients' final destination bank account information for stimulus payments," the spokesperson continued. "We share our clients' frustration that many of them have not yet received these much-needed payments due to IRS decisions, and we are actively working with the IRS to get stimulus payments sent directly to client accounts."

Likewise, a TurboTax spokesperson said that the "IRS has the appropriate banking information for all TurboTax filers, which can be used by them to distribute stimulus payments. This is true regardless of whether a customer chose to receive their refund on a debit card, selected refund transfer or other services."

"Any TurboTax customer who selects a refund transfer or a debit card and gets a stimulus payment sent from the IRS to those accounts will receive those stimulus payments without delay or fees into the account they received their tax refund," the TurboTax spokesperson added.

TIME has asked both the IRS and the Treasury Department for more information to sort out these claims.

If the IRS sends a stimulus payment to a temporary refund transfer account that is now closed, the bank is required to reject the payment and send it back to the IRS. "Timing of this process depends on several variables, including when and how the payments are rejected and returned to the IRS, when 'Get My Payment' updates, and when taxpayers check the tool," reads the IRS website.

Affected payment recipients will then have to wait for their paper check to be sent out to the last address the IRS has on file for them, or their last address on file with the U.S. Postal Service, depending on what's most current. "Often, these folks will be getting checks," Eric Smith, a media relations specialist at the IRS, told TIME in an email.

Lipman said this problem may be particularly troublesome because many of the people who opt for refund transfers are low-income individuals without a steady cash flow — exactly the people most in need of their stimulus payments.

Grace Allison, the director of the New Mexico Legal Aid Low Income Taxpayer Clinic, told TIME that one of her clients — a low-income woman who supports her granddaughter — had opted for a refund anticipation loan on her 2018 taxes. "Fast forward to 2020. The IRS website tells her that her refund has been sent to an account that she does not recognize," Allison wrote in an April 21 email. "With a little sleuthing, I figure out it is the temporary account set up on behalf of the tax preparation company for the 2018 tax season." She said the company is returning the payment to the IRS and her client will receive her check in the mail.

IRS phone lines are down

Doug McKirahan, a 64-year-old San Franciscan, told TIME he struggled to input his information into the IRS' Get My Payment tool before finally succeeding last week. But McKirahan said what's most frustrating is his inability to contact the agency directly. The IRS said it's currently unable to provide live assistance due to reduced staffing because of the coronavirus pandemic. It has also greatly reduced its responses to paper correspondences.

"I mean, they're specifically saying 'we will not answer calls,'" McKirahan said. "So you're left wondering, am I ever going to see this or not? And if so, how? How is this problem going to end up getting solved?"

TIME received dozens of emails from others left frustrated because they couldn't contact the IRS about their stimulus payment. Married couple Bob and Darcy Tomko, for instance, believe they received a smaller payment than they qualify for, but they can't figure out how to report their problem. Bob said he called the IRS to no avail, and then tried "about 20 different numbers" at the Treasury Department for multiple hours. He eventually reached someone who said they couldn't help him.

The IRS and the Treasury Department did not respond to TIME's questions about how people can report their problems to the IRS. However, the IRS website says the agency will send everyone a letter within 15 days after their payment has been sent out, and that letter will include information on how to report problems.

Reported glitches with the 'Get My Payment' tool

When you log into the IRS' "Get My Payment" tool, you might get a message saying "payment status not available." The agency says this message could appear for multiple reasons: If you're not eligible for a payment, if you still have to file your 2018 or 2019 taxes, if you only recently filed a tax return or provided your information through a portal for non-filers, or if you're an SSA or RRB Form 1099 recipient or a SSI recipient, meaning your information is not yet in the system.

However, multiple people told TIME that they were given the "payment status not available" message even though they don't fall into any of the above categories. One difficulty is that the "payment status not available" message also shows up when you input your information incorrectly. Chris Blanchette, a 31-year-old small business owner in Florida, told TIME that he repeatedly entered his information into Get My Payment — and was locked out for 24 hours after trying too many times — before he realized he had to exclude the number sign from his address. He's frustrated that the IRS site doesn't offer a different message for people who made a mistake and those who simply don't qualify for a payment.

When asked about the "payment status not available" errors, Smith of the IRS told TIME that "the key is that it is most definitely not a one and done situation. We're updating status information every day. For a particular person, it's possible that no info is available today, but that could change tomorrow." He said the payment status updates every day, usually overnight. "But repeated attempts on the same day is not necessary and can result in a lock-out for that day," he added.

After recent reports of long wait times and website crashes, the IRS said that it's "actively monitoring site volume; if site volume gets too high, users are sent to an online 'waiting room' for a brief wait until space becomes available, much like private sector online sites."

Other users say a glitch in the Get My Payment form prevents them from entering their direct deposit information. Mary Fullerton, a 59-year-old resident of of Crystal Beach, Fl., told TIME that she can't input her banking info because the tool requires people to select whether they received a refund or owed money during the previous tax year. Fullerton, who is retired, did neither. "We're aware of the no refund/no balance due situation and are working on that issue," Smith told TIME.

Some people married to immigrants won't get a payment

In order for a married couple filing jointly to receive a payment, both people must have a valid Social Security number (with the exception of couples in which either partner is a member of the U.S. military during the taxable year).

According to the Migration Policy Institute, about 1.2 million immigrants without Social Security numbers are married to U.S. citizens, potentially excluding those couples from receiving a payment. However, a Treasury Department spokesperson said that some of those people do not file jointly with their spouse, or may qualify for the military exemption, so the actual number of couples who don't receive a stimulus payment for this reason should be smaller than 1.2 million.

Still, The Los Angeles Times reports that this rule potentially means that frontline workers like hospital employees, first responders and public transportation employees will not receive a payment.

Some banks have seized stimulus payments from overdrawn accounts

Some people have said their stimulus payments were seized by their bank to cover debts on overdrawn accounts, The New York Times reports. Banks are legally allowed to withhold funds from accounts with negative balances, and there's no provision in the CARES Act to prevent them from doing so in the case of stimulus payments, according to the Times.

"We are aware of the issue and are actively working on this," a Treasury Department spokesperson told TIME.

The USAA, which serves veterans and their families, was among the banks reportedly seizing payments to pay off overdrawn accounts. However, it reversed its position on April 16 following a report by The American Prospect. In a statement to TIME, the USAA said that it has "applied this policy retroactively to any member accounts with a negative balance at the time the first wave of stimulus payments were deposited."

Anat Admati, a professor of finance and economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, told TIME that she believes it's "not right" that some banks have been allowed to garnish the stimulus payments from overdrawn accounts amid a pandemic that's ground the economy to a halt.

"If [people] decide to cover the overdraft they can, but they shouldn't be made to do that," said Admati. "It should not be up to the banks to decide whether people should buy food with it, or pay rent, or cover overdraft."

Many major banks, including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citibank and Wells Fargo, have said they will temporarily stop garnishing funds from overdrawn accounts so people can access their stimulus payments, according to the Times.

Some people say they didn't receive payments for their children

When 42-year-old Shelly Cellak of Wilmette, Ill., went to go check her stimulus payment, she was shocked to see the $500 payments for her two children had not arrived. Both her children are under 17 and she listed them as dependents on her 2018 and 2019 tax returns. Many other TIME readers described a similar situation.

"We're still reviewing that issue, though many people with children are also receiving their payments," said Smith of the IRS.

"As with everyone else, our response to the coronavirus challenge continues to evolve," Smith continued. "At any given time, the most current information on our available assistance will be posted on our Coronavirus page under IRS operations and services."

Please send any tips, leads, and stories to virus@time.com.

(IOWA CITY, Iowa) — Tyson Foods suspended operations Wednesday at an Iowa plant that is critical to the nation's pork supply but was blamed for fueling a coronavirus outbreak in the community.

The Arkansas-based company said the closure of the plant in Waterloo would deny a vital market to hog farmers and further disrupt U.S. meat supply. Tyson had kept the facility, its largest pork plant, open in recent days over the objections of alarmed local officials.

The plant can process 19,500 hogs per day, accounting for 3.9% of U.S. pork processing capacity, according to the National Pork Board.

More than 180 infections have been linked to the plant and officials expect that number to dramatically rise. Testing of its 2,800 workers is expected to begin Friday. Cases and hospitalizations in Black Hawk County have skyrocketed in recent days and local officials say the plant is the largest source of infections.

In addition to those who have tested positive for the virus, hundreds of workers were staying home out of fear, and the plant had been running at reduced production levels.

Employers have struggled to contain the virus in meatpacking plants, where workers toil side by side on production lines and often share crowded locker rooms, cafeterias and rides to work. While plants have added safety measures, public health experts say social distancing is virtually impossible.

Several facilities have temporarily closed due to virus outbreaks, including a Smithfield Foods plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and a JBS USA plant in Worthington, Minnesota. Others have stayed open or resumed production after pauses for worker testing and cleaning.

Tyson Fresh Meats president Steve Stouffer said the closure in Iowa was driven by "the combination of worker absenteeism, COVID-19 cases and community concerns." He warned of "significant ramifications" for the farmers, distributors and grocers in the supply chain.

Tyson said workers would be compensated during the shutdown and that the timing of reopening would depend on several factors, including testing.

The Black Hawk County Board of Health requested Tuesday that Tyson or Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds temporarily close the plant. The board warned that its continued operation would exacerbate the spread of the virus in the county.

A 65-year-old employee in the plant's laundry department died Sunday after contracting the virus, the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reported.

Waterloo Mayor Quentin Hart and local officials had called for a shutdown, saying Tyson was putting its workforce in danger. Iowa's worker safety agency said Tuesday that was investigating the plant.

The governor blocked local authorities from closing the plant in an April 16 order that banned social gatherings in northeastern Iowa. It granted the exclusive power to the Iowa Department of Public Health to shut down businesses over coronavirus concerns.

The governor and the department had been working with Tyson to keep the plant open.

Reynolds argued that the economic disruption caused by plant closures outweighed the health risks, warning that farmers would potentially have to euthanize their pigs. She said that "people are gonna get" the virus in large workplaces but most will experience mild or no symptoms.

Lawmakers said an earlier closure would have better protected public health and been less harmful economically. "My concern is the impact this has had because we didn't act soon enough," said Democratic Rep. Ras Smith of Waterloo.

The governor didn't respond directly when asked Wednesday if the state should have intervened. She defended her overall response to the crisis but said, "There's always more we could have done."

Tyson resumed operations Tuesday at its pork plant in Columbus Junction, Iowa, which had been shut down for two weeks after an outbreak infected hundreds and killed two workers.

___

Associated Press writer David Pitt in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.

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(LOS ANGELES) — Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. agreed Tuesday to pay a record $25 million fine to resolve criminal charges that it served tainted food that sickened more than 1,100 people in the U.S. in outbreaks from 2015 to 2018 and sent sales plunging.

The fast food company was charged in Los Angeles federal court with two counts of violating the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act by serving adulterated food that caused four outbreaks of norovirus, which causes diarrhea, vomiting and abdominal cramps, and a food poisoning incident.

The company admitted that poor safety practices, such as not keeping food at proper temperatures to prevent pathogen growth, sickened customers in Los Angeles and nearby Simi Valley, as well as Boston, Sterling, Virginia, and Powell, Ohio.

Read more: Inside Chipotle's Plan to Make You Love It Again

The string of outbreaks, which began in August 2015 in Simi Valley, came about two months before an E. coli outbreak at Chipotle spread to multiple states that temporarily closed dozens of restaurants and hurt sales as other food scares emerged. The criminal case was not related to E. coli.

The Newport Beach, California-based company entered into a deferred prosecution agreement that will allow it to avoid conviction by continuing to improve its food safety program, following other rules and paying the record-setting fine for a food safety case, federal prosecutors said.

"Chipotle failed to ensure that its employees both understood and complied with its food safety protocols, resulting in hundreds of customers across the country getting sick," U.S. Attorney Nick Hanna said in a statement. "Today's steep penalty, coupled with the tens of millions of dollars Chipotle already has spent to upgrade its food safety program since 2015, should result in greater protections for Chipotle customers and remind others in the industry to review and improve their own health and safety practices."

The company said in a statement that it would continue improving food safety practices that include reducing the number of employees who touch food, testing the quality of raw ingredients and tracing the movement of food supplies to determine where a problem may have occurred.

"This settlement represents an acknowledgment of how seriously Chipotle takes food safety every day and is an opportunity to definitively turn the page on past events," Brian Niccol, chairman and chief executive officer, said.

Outbreaks of norovirus, which is spread easily by people mishandling food, began in Simi Valley when 234 Chipotle customers and employees became ill. An employee who vomited was sent home, but the illness was not reported internally, as required, and food safety procedures weren't implemented until two days later after multiple customers reported becoming ill.

In December 2015, 141 people reported norovirus type illnesses after visiting a Chipotle restaurant in Boston. Prosecutors said that outbreak likely began Dec. 3 after an apprentice manager was ordered by a regional manager to continue working after he said he vomited on the job. The incident wasn't reported to company safety officials.

After taking a sick day, the apprentice returned to work and packaged a catering order for the Boston College basketball team. Several players subsequently got sick.

An investigation by the Food and Drug Administration found numerous incidents at other Chipotle restaurants where employees vomited at work, but didn't go home in violation of the company's policies, according to court documents. Some former employees said they felt pressured to work when they were sick.

The company apologized for sickening customers in newspaper ads at the end of 2015 and again in 2016. One of its executives acknowledged that people were afraid of their food.

The company then had two norovirus outbreaks in 2017 — one that sickened 135 in Sterling, Virginia, in July and another that made 28 people, including 11 employees, ill in Los Angeles in December.

In July 2018, nearly 650 people got food poisoning after dining at a Chipotle restaurant in Powell, Ohio. The outbreak that caused diarrhea and abdominal pain was tied to bacteria that proliferates when food is not kept at proper temperatures, prosecutors said.

Shares in Chipotle fell nearly 3% to close Tuesday at $786.69.

___

AP Business writer Dee-Ann Durbin contributed to this story from Detroit.