Good morning. Regulators are beginning to loosen some compliance requirements in an effort to help businesses affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

Mutual funds facing stress from the market turmoil caused by virus will be able to tap their parent asset-management companies and other affiliates for funding under relief announced this week by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The move gives the $19 trillion mutual-fund industry another tool to deal with large swings in redemptions, including borrowing money from the firm that manages the portfolio, according to an SEC order.

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Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency is planning to waive compliance requirements and deadlines for a range of industries, including oil refiners, water utilities and sewage plants, as it seeks to help businesses affected by the coronavirus pandemic, according to Trump administration officials.

The biggest change likely will be to waive or postpone coming deadlines to switch to cleaner-burning summer-grade gasoline, according to administration officials and a business lobbyist.

The Trump administration was set to implement a Korean War-era defense mobilization law on Tuesday to expedite the production of about 60,000 test kits for the novel coronavirus, but at the last minute deemed it unnecessary, despite mounting calls for President Trump to use the law to resolve severe equipment shortages.

The Defense Production Act gives the president powers to require and to provide incentives to businesses to produce goods tied to national defense, as well as to control the distribution of those products. Mr. Trump, speaking Tuesday evening at a White House news conference, said the Defense Production Act hadn’t been used, saying the government hadn’t “found it to be the case” that the law was needed.

Some companies that don’t traditionally manufacture medical goods and equipment have already begun doing so. Ford, for instance, is working with 3M to produce respirators and with General Electric to make ventilators to help combat the coronavirus pandemic. And distillers around the country are using their alcohol supply to churn out hand sanitizer as Americans scramble to find the cleaner.

The pandemic, meanwhile, is testing all manner of rules and regulations in the pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors.

• The Trump administration is considering a special enrollment period to let more people sign up for healthcare under the Affordable Care Act during the coronavirus crisis—while it continues to challenge the law’s validity in court.
   
• A pair of states are saying their coronavirus restrictions on some medical procedures compel providers to stop performing most abortions, setting up new skirmishes on the issue at a time of national crisis.
   
• Two major New York City hospital systems are banning partners from the delivery room in response to the new coronavirus outbreak, sparking a backlash from health-care advocates concerned about the policy’s toll on pregnant women and their families.

• The new coronavirus has some wondering if it makes sense for big banks to conduct stress tests this year. Some economists are predicting that the current downturn could be sharper and reach farther than the worst-case scenario on this year’s test, which the Fed refers to as “severely adverse.”
   
• The firearms industry is lobbying state and federal officials to have gun stores be categorized as essential businesses that are allowed to remain open during the nationwide shutdowns meant to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Business has boomed for the industry in the past week, with long lines stretching outside gun stores across the country.
   
• Modell’s Sporting Goods Inc. is asking a judge to suspend its bankruptcy case and its store-closing sales, citing the impact of government restrictions on retailers due to the coronavirus pandemic. State limitations and prohibitions on non-essential shopping have forced Modell’s to halt liquidation sales, leaving the company with no choice but to temporarily mothball its operations, Modell’s lawyers said in a filing Monday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Newark, N.J.
   
• Amazon accused the Pentagon of seeking to manipulate its review of a huge cloud-computing deal to steer the award to rival Microsoft Amazon urged a federal judge to require the Defense Department to conduct a broader review than it has proposed. Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims already halted work on the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, citing allegations by Amazon of contract irregularities.

Hackers targeting health care organizations have compromised computer networks and disrupted patient care—in one case hobbling the Czech Republic’s second-biggest hospital for almost two weeks—as the coronavirus pandemic already tests the limits of health-care systems around the globe.

Medical systems and hospitals rely heavily on technology to access patient records, diagnose illnesses and operate hospital equipment. They have been frequent targets during cyberattacks in the past—including a Europe-wide ransomware attack that paralyzed some U.K. hospitals in 2017.

The recent activity, though, is targeting critical health care facilities and systems amid an unprecedented global health crisis, as the world tries to cope with the fallout of the Covid-19 outbreak.

The U.S. and Europe saw record declines in business activity in March, as economic activity slowed around the world due to measures aimed at containing the new coronavirus. Data firm IHS Markit said its composite purchasing managers index for the U.S.—an aggregate measure of activity in the manufacturing and services sectors—dropped to a seasonally adjusted 40.5 in March from 49.6 in February. That was a record low for the 10½-year-old series, which started after the 2007-2009 recession. 

In the U.S., Americans are waiting anxiously for unemployment benefits as state unemployment systems adjust to record-high levels of claims in the wake of the new coronavirus. Meanwhile, as the pandemic upends the economy, forcing restaurants, movie theaters, gyms and offices to close, many businesses across the country are likely to stop paying rent on April 1. That has caused some big-name investors to zero in on commercial mortgages as a stress point in the financial system.

• Workers, Businesses Lack Funds to Tide Them Over Until Help Comes
• Bond Downgrades Begin Amid Coronavirus Slowdown
• Occidental Petroleum Cuts Pay for Staff, Executives

The delay deals a fresh blow to the weakening Japanese economy but should ensure Shinzo Abe wins a farewell moment in the international spotlight as prime minister. It also will have important ramifications for media giants Comcast and Discovery, depriving them of at least a billion ad dollars this year and taking away a critical launchpad for their other programming.

As New York City hospitals face a surge of patients with the novel coronavirus, they are being asked to double capacity for future weeks. How that additional capacity will be staffed is an open question for some health systems.

An emergency room doctor in the NYU Langone Health system said some physicians have been too scared to come to the emergency department because they don’t want to be exposed to coronavirus. Some smaller tasks that could be offloaded haven’t yet been transferred to nonemergency care doctors, this person said.

“If these ER docs don’t get any sort of breather, we are not going to be ready for the onslaught to come,” the doctor said.

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Send comments to the Risk & Compliance editor, Jack Hagel, at jack.hagel@wsj.com