To this point, the West Coast has borne the brunt of coronavirus in the U.S., with the bulk of confirmed cases so far reported in California and Washington state. But that’s likely to change soon.

On Friday, health authorities in Florida said two COVID-19 patients in the state have died, in what are believed to be the first deaths linked to the disease on the East Coast. One of the patients lived in the district of Rep. Matt Gaetz, who drew criticism from colleagues earlier this week for “making light” of coronavirus when he wore a massive gas mask to a House floor vote on measures to combat the epidemic.

“Our prayers are with his family and loved ones during this difficult time,” the Republican congressman tweeted late Friday, adding: “I’m confident our community will continue to remain vigilant in combating this disease and pray there will be no further contractions of the virus in Northwest Florida.”

The state has confirmed more than a dozen cases so far — the largest cluster on the East Coast outside of New York, which has reported several dozen cases of its own.

All told, the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. has crested 300 — 17 of whom have died — and the total tally of confirmed cases worldwide stands at more than 102,000, some 3,400 of whom have died from the disease.

The vast majority of those cases have been reported in Hubei province in mainland China, the outbreak’s epicenter, but the number of new cases there has been declining lately — while the virus has taken firm root in South Korea, Iran and Italy and has reached dozens of countries.

Back in the U.S., schools and companies have announced a spate of measures to mitigate spread of the virus. Stanford University, the University of Washington and Seattle University, which boast tens of thousands of students among them, said Friday they are canceling in-person classes through the end of their respective quarters later this month.

And Amtrak, on the East Coast, said that because it is “experiencing some reduced demand,” it plans to halt its nonstop Acela train service between New York and Washington, D.C., beginning Tuesday and continuing through late May.

Texas has reported just a half-dozen confirmed cases, none of which have been found in Austin — but that fact did not dissuade the city’s mayor, Steve Adler, from preemptively canceling South by Southwest, the city’s signature music, film and technology event.

“We have no reported cases in Austin, but certainly the longer we can stay that way, the better off we are. It’s inevitable that it’s coming here as to all other cities, but delay is better,” Adler told NPR’s Weekend Edition on Saturday.

The event drew more than 400,000 visitors to the city last year. Adler acknowledged that its cancellation this year, just a week before its scheduled opening, is “very tough and truly heartbreaking” for the performers and vendors who had been depending on the business the event customarily brings.

“We’re going to have to mitigate that as best we can as a community, be as resilient as we can,” he said, adding: “We just ultimately didn’t have a choice because the focus needed to be on doing what was necessary to best keep the city safe.”

Hotel used for quarantined patients collapses in China

A five-story hotel in the city of Quanzhou collapsed on Saturday evening, trapping at least 70 people amid the rubble, according to The People’s Daily, an official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party. The paper reports that about 28 people have been rescued so far from the building, which had been used as a quarantine location for people suspected of having COVID-19.

It remains unclear what caused the building to fall.

The Vatican cancels in-person gathering Sunday

People who wish to see Pope Francis lead prayers in St. Peter’s Square, a weekly event that regularly draws tens of thousands of worshipers, will need to content themselves with viewing him remotely on Sunday.

The Holy See Press Office announced Saturday that the pontiff will lead the prayer from the Library of the Apostolic Palace — rather than from his usual window overlooking the square — and will live-stream the proceedings online rather than encourage visitors to gather at the Vatican. Officials say they will be carrying out his general audience Wednesday in a similar fashion.

“These decisions are necessary in order to avoid the risk of the spread of COVID-19,” said the Holy See, noting that the move was done at the request of Italian authorities.

Last summer, when Elizabeth Warren was bringing out thousands of people at mega rallies who would wait long into the night in seemingly never-ending selfie lines, progressive groups were torn. They saw both Warren and her fellow presidential candidate Bernie Sanders as allies for their causes.

Sanders had inherited goodwill from his 2016 run against Hillary Clinton. But Warren was the charismatic star on late night TV who had fought the big banks during the recession, and, notably, the politician progressives had initially tried to draft into the 2016 primary as an opponent to Clinton before Sanders entered the race.

“Our members really wanted to see her run in that race,” explained Charles Chamberlain, chair of Democracy for America, one of the organisations that had helped spearhead the “Run, Warren, Run” movement in 2015. “We believed that she would have been a better candidate than Hillary Clinton.”

Last week, Democracy for America endorsed Sanders over Warren.

Chamberlain said the major change in the interim years was Sanders’ presidential bid in 2016.

“Bernie Sanders ran – in 2016 – an incredible campaign that won 23 contests, changed the narrative in this country about what is possible for progressives, and even moved the entire Democratic party to the left,” he said.

For much of the primary season, Chamberlain said, their members were split but as it became clear that Sanders was winning races and Warren couldn’t finish higher than third place, they decided to publicly back the Vermont senator.

“The guiding principle among our members was who is the best candidate to take on Donald Trump and who can win,” Chamberlain said.

The story of how and why the woman who was once lauded as the great progressive political hope lost the backing of a number of leading progressive groups explains part of why Warren’s campaign failed.

If Sanders had not run this year, they agree, they would have wholeheartedly backed Warren. Some groups made a point of insisting their endorsements were not because of anything Warren said or did, but because of Sanders’ credibility and consistency on issues like health care and climate change. They bristle at the suggestion of a single moment that led to their decisions, but they acknowledge a turning point that began in October when Freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Sanders. The Vermont senator’s support then accelerated into the winter as Warren was seen as backpedaling on a core issue — Medicare for All.

A message: Don’t stay neutral

The first major progressive group to make an endorsement was the Working Families Party in September, and it chose Warren.

“Elizabeth Warren has been a personal hero to many WFP members,” the group’s director Maurice Mitchell said to an estimated 20,000-person crowd at a rally in New York City. “Her critique of the financial industry helped lay the groundwork for Occupy Wall Street.”

The Working Families Party’s decision sent a message to fellow progressives: don’t stay neutral in the primary, pick a side.

At the time, Warren was rising in the polls, and for a sliver of time, she even overtook Joe Biden as the national frontrunner. So, it seemed that both progressive organizations and voters would be split between Warren and Sanders.

But, ultimately, that’s not what happened.

“You started to see dominoes fall”

In October, three of the four members of the so-called congressional “squad” of progressives — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar — decided to back Sanders in quick succession. These young, multi-racial women, some of the most outspoken progressive voices in Congress, had put their foot on the scale. And progressives around the country noticed.

Sanders’ campaign manager Faiz Shakir described the endorsements as “very impactful.”

“You started to see dominoes fall after that,” said George Goehl, the director of People’s Action, a coalition of progressive groups that says it represents an estimated 1 million people. The organization endorsed Sanders in December.

Also in December, the Center for Popular Democracy Action, another progressive coalition, backed Sanders. And then in January, the Sunrise Movement, a group of thousands of young climate activists, publicly backed Sanders.

They all pointed to the Vermont senator’s authenticity plus the unparalleled time and access he gave them. But, some of them also acknowledged a concern many Democrats have alluded to this cycle — electability.

“A lot of us believe Sen. Sanders is uniquely capable of winning and beating Trump,” said Goehl.

The battle to out-progressive Sanders

Warren fans often praised her trademark plans and her focus on policy. But, when it came to ideology, Sanders took those ideas further. Warren promised a two-cent wealth tax on people with a net worth over $50 million. Sanders upped her, and called for a 1% wealth tax on net worth above $32 million. Warren promised affordable child care. Then, Sanders, promised free child care.

“All the candidates [had] progressive stances, but Bernie’s tend to go furthest,” said Evan Weber, political director and co-founder of the Sunrise Movement. And that was a distinction many progressives noticed.

October was a tough month for Warren. She was repeatedly questioned by journalists and her opponents over the details of how she would pay for Medicare for All without raising middle class taxes. On Nov. 1 she put out a plan, but the more details she offered, the more compromising she appeared to progressive purists.

“Her sort of distancing herself from Medicare for All and when she thought she would be able to get it done — really, you know, distanced her from our folks,” said Natalia Salgado, political director with the Center for Popular Democracy Action.

One progressive activist NPR spoke with for this story is backing Sanders but acknowledged that Warren’s two-step plan on Medicare for All was the more realistic way to achieve universal coverage. Still, he said, she shouldn’t have compromised at the outset, because Republicans would chip away at it further. Democrats, he insisted, needed to be bold and uncompromising.

But in addition to health care, there was another key issue for progressives — immigration. It has increasingly become a pillar of the their agenda, especially under Donald Trump’s administration.

“The sort of defining factors for us between Bernie and Warren was his stance on a moratorium for deportations,” Salgado said. (In November, Sanders released an immigration plan calling for a moratorium on deportations. Around the same time, Warren said she was “open” to a moratorium. In February, Sanders’ campaign manager suggested their moratorium would have some exceptions, but by then, Sanders was already benefiting from being seen as the furthest left on this issue).

The struggle for Warren was that she could never seem to out-progressive the man who had come to define the movement after 2016.