As orders from Europe and the Middle East dried up due to the coronavirus, Ye Zhenqing knew that he would have to take drastic measures to prevent his sunglasses manufacturing business from going under. With corporate loans out of reach, Ye pledged his own apartment as collateral for a 2 million yuan personal loan to help his business.

“I am extremely short of money right now. It is difficult to apply for a bank loan," said Ye, the founder and CEO of Wenzhou Zhen Qing Eyewear, in the eastern city of Wenzhou. Special low-interest business loans have been introduced to help companies cope with the consequences of the coronavirusBut "they don't apply to us," Ye said, adding that small companies like his have to put up huge amounts of collateral and pay higher interest rates than big companies.

As more business owners like Ye are forced to compromise their homes to stay afloat, the ramifications for the broader economy could be severe.

Small unbanked businesses form the backbone of the Chinese economy and are taking a serious hit from the outbreak of coronavirus: 85% of 1,506 SMEs surveyed in early February expect to run out of cash within three months, according to a report by Tsinghua University and Peking University.

The 2 million yuan loan is enough to cover operating expenses and the salaries of about 100 workers for just two months, after which it will need new funds or the return of orders.

He coronavirus, which has infected more than 78,000 people and killed 2,700 in China, has already shut down large sectors of the economy. A wave of SME closures or layoffs would deal a further blow to President Xi Jinping's efforts to stimulate growth, which economists now expect to fall to just 3% in the first quarter.

Beijing has recognized the cash crunch facing small businesses and has deployed vast financial resources to deal with it.

Earlier this week, the People's Bank of China earmarked 500 billion yuan in fresh financing to provide cheap loans to smaller businesses struggling to resume operations amid the coronavirus outbreak. coronavirus. This is in addition to the 300 billion yuan re-lending quota authorized this month by the central bank.

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"If the support quotas are not enough, we will increase them further," Liu Guoqiang, deputy governor of the PBOC, said at a press conference on Thursday.

But these programs aren't reaching the businesses that need them, according to Zhang Qinghua, who works at a Guangzhou-based financial services company and helps small businesses apply for loans.

“There is a huge demand for loans right now, as most of the small and medium-sized businesses will face cash flight within three months,” he said. “Most companies are undecided about whether or not to continue, whether it is worth taking loans. Some business owners have already chosen to liquidate their business."

The race to stop the spread of the new coronavirus could be frustrated by Americans fearful of large medical bills if they get tested, low-income workers who lose pay if they take time off when sick, and similar dilemmas that leave the United States more vulnerable to the epidemic. than countries with universal health coverage and stronger safety nets.

As testing for the virus spreads, health care experts predict that some people with flu-like illnesses - or those who may have been exposed - will avoid finding out if they have been infected because they do not have insurance or because they have plans that impose a large part of the cost of their care on them.

Making sure the right people get tested, and keeping them away from others if they are infected, is crucial to help slow the spread of the virus within communities as it appears in an increasing number of states.

Now that federal health officials have ironed out teething problems with the test itself and have allowed more labs to get involved in finding the infection, this testing and quarantine work is the essential second stage. However, the government has not yet begun to tell Americans where to go for tests, and neither public nor private insurers are changing their rules to protect people from test-related charges.

Some preparations recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are incompatible with the way the benefits work. Officials have urged people to keep an adequate supply of their routine medications in case they end up in quarantine. But insurance companies rarely allow refills until the patient is almost out of pills. The agency also urges people with respiratory illnesses to stay home from work. But with no federal sick leave requirements, some experts predict the virus will spread more quickly.

For a rapidly spreading international epidemic, the country's health care system and benefits for many workers "are certainly not optimally designed," said Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at the Center for Health Insurance Reform at George Town University.

Federal funds cover the cost of the test coronavirus itself when performed in federal, state, or local public health laboratories. But that changes as academic and commercial labs get involved. In neither case does the government cushion the bills for visits to the doctor's office, urgent care center, or emergency room, even though nearly half of the 160 million Americans with job insurance have insurance plans. health with high deductibles.

"Deductibles are designed to make people think twice before going to the doctor if they're feeling sick," said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health research organization. "In a potential pandemic, the last thing you want is for people to think twice before going to the doctor."

America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry's leading trade group, has published a guide called "Keeping Americans Safe from coronavirus«. The statement says that insurers are "carefully monitoring the system" and working with the CDC to share information.

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But he does not urge insurance companies to eliminate out-of-pocket costs for tests or for visits to doctors or clinics for respiratory illnesses, saying health plans may want to determine "whether policy changes are needed to ensure that people get essential care.

Thomas Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said removing the financial disincentive to get tested "has to be at the top of the list" of issues that federal health officials address.

Inglesby said that other countries, including Western democracies with government-funded health care systems, have not been fully publishing their testing strategies. But he said: "Countries where patients could receive large bills for diagnostic tests will have additional problems identifying people."

About 40 families in a Pennsylvania school district received a threatening letter from an administrator this month: If you don't pay the lunch debt school fees of more than $10, the district said they could lose their children.

The letter, signed by Joseph Muth, director of federal programs for the Western Wyoming Valley School District, told parents that sending children to school without lunch money was a form of neglect, and "the result may unless your child is removed from your home and placed in a foster home."

Since then, local officials have condemned Muth's threats. Legal experts have weighed in, saying a parent's inability to pay would not qualify as negligence in the state. And on Wednesday, the school board apologized for the letter and reversed its initial decision not to accept donations to pay off the school district's $22,000 total lunch debt, NPR reports.

Although the indignation has returned to put the lunch debt school in the national spotlight, advocates say donations and apologies won't get to the root of the problem.

No one knows exactly how much school lunch debt exists across the country, because districts keep this information secret, according to Elyse Homel Vitale, a senior advocate with the nonprofit California Food Policy Advocates, which supports policies aimed at increase access to food. What is clear is that the western Wyoming Valley is not alone: A survey by the School Nutrition Association, which represents 58,000 school nutrition officials, found that more than 75 percent of school districts reported lunch debt in the previous school year, and 40 percent say their debt is growing.

The US Department of Agriculture, which runs the National School Lunch Program, has said its funds cannot be used to eliminate the lunch debt even though federal child nutrition programs are meant to curb this problem in the first place: In 2018, 30 million children living in households with incomes at or below 130 percent of the poverty line received free meals at through the NSLP. But each year fewer kids are getting free lunches, according to the Economic Research Service, and more kids are being denied meals because of clerical errors or program limitations.

Children living in households that receive benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are automatically eligible for free meals, but school districts and states have to certify them first. According to Center for Food Research and Action analyst Crystal FitzSimons, this isn't always done correctly: Some states simply don't enroll the USDA-required 95 percent of SNAP participants. Other times, a child is overlooked when their name is misspelled.

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The consequences of such a small mistake can be dire: As previous research from the nonprofit newsroom New Food Economy has shown, families sometimes believe their child is getting free meals, while in reality they are racking up hundreds of dollars in debt that districts can go after using for-profit collection agencies. Most districts in the 2018 SNA survey said they notify parents directly about the lunch debt or offer some kind of assistance, but only half accept donations.

One reason for the rise in controversy like this might be that the USDA required schools to begin collecting the lunch debt unpaid in 2017, according to SNA spokeswoman Diane Pratt-Heavner.

There's also a broader problem with the NSLP: Its eligibility criteria uses what economists agree is an outdated measure of poverty that ignores the cost of living and other factors that cause children to be insecure. food.