Our live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic in the US has ended for the day. Follow developments from the globe here.
Some retails stores in Los Angeles will be able to open starting Friday, Mayor Eric Garcetti announced in a news conference Wednesday.
Garcetti said he plans to modify the safer at home order in the city of Los Angeles.
Florists, toy stores, music stores, book stores, clothing stores and sporting goods stores in Los Angeles may offer curbside pickup, he said. Car dealerships will also be able to open.
Some context: This is in line with what Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer said in an earlier news conference.
He clarified that stores will only able to offer curbside pickup and that people will not able to go inside the stores.
Starting Saturday, the city will open its trails, parks and golf courses.
Face coverings will be required at all city trails and golf courses, Garcetti said. Runyon canyon will remain closed.
Friday May 8 marks the beginning of phase two, a slow and gradual loosening of some of the restrictions, he said.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer condemned President Trump’s decision to continue to push the Supreme Court to repeal the Affordable Care Act while the coronavirus pandemic persists, saying it’s “tone-deaf.”
Attorney General William Barr made a last-minute request on Monday to modify the administration’s position, arguing that they should pull back from its insistence that the entire law be struck down.
“How can they do this?” asked Schumer. “I am just utterly amazed. They stick to this right-wing ideology which helps a few very well-to-do people and say to the rest of America let’s fiddle. Which is what they’re doing while America is in many ways burning.”
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A warehouse worker at Amazon’s Waukegan, Illinois, site died of Covid-19 on April 18, according to the company.
He is the fourth Amazon warehouse employee known to have died from the disease across the United States.
According to Amazon, the employee was last on site on March 19, and showed no symptoms.
The company confirmed the death of an warehouse worker at Amazon’s Staten Island fulfillment center Tuesday and has previously confirmed two additional Covid-19-related deaths of workers employed at its US warehouses in Hawthorne, California, and Tracy, California.
There are at least 1,223,468 cases of coronavirus in the US and at least 73,039 people have died from the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University’s tally of cases.
Johns Hopkins reported 19,117 new cases and 1,975 reported deaths on Wednesday.
The totals include cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as repatriated cases.
The Pentagon is considering a ban on new recruits joining the military if they have been hospitalized for coronavirus unless they get a waiver from the service they want to sign up with, according to a defense official.
The official said the guidance is being put in place because there is little understanding of the long-term effects of the virus and there is a concern that potential recruits who have been hospitalized may need further medical assessments.
The new policy is being finalized to set medical restrictions on recruits who may have tested positive or have been treated for the virus. Department of Defense medical waivers are required for a wide variety of medical conditions ranging from heart disease to a loss of vision.
The Military Times was first to report the news.
Some more context: Months into the pandemic, the virus is posing significant medical challenges to the military on several fronts.
There is a particular concern over whether a sufficient number of recruits will be able to join before a rigorous enough testing regime is in place to ensure they are healthy enough to enter training.
The fact sailors on the USS Theodore Roosevelt are still testing positive weeks after the outbreak of the virus on the ship is underlining the need to solve the medical mystery of why some people carry the virus but have no symptoms and may continue to test negative, according to several Navy officials.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper said at the Pentagon Tuesday that the department would randomly test groups of people “to understand how many asymptomatic or carriers are maybe out there.”
The New York Police Department announced another three deaths related to Covid-19, bringing the department death toll to 41.
“These remarkable men will never be forgotten. Every member of the NYPD, of all ranks and titles, will keep their memories alive and honor their legacies by faithfully carrying on their most important work,” the police department said in a statement.
Arkansas plans to test 60,000 people in the month of May and hopes to receive 90,000 Covid-19 test kits from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Wednesday.
The Arkansas Department of Health’s website stated that 59,003 coronavirus tests have been administered so far.
The Louisiana Department of Health has reported that the state has 30,399 coronavirus cases, which represents an increase of 403 cases from Tuesday.
The state death total increased by 53 to a total of 2,094.
In Orleans Parish, the total number of cases increased by 33 cases to a total of 6,608 and the number of deaths increased by 11 to 464.
On a positive note, the number of hospitalizations and those on ventilators decreased during this 24-hour period, the department said.
The US Supreme Court won’t hear an appeal by a Pennsylvania politician and businesses to lift the state’s coronavirus restrictions.
Without comment, the court on Wednesday declined to hear the case.
Gov. Tom Wolf ordered all non-life-sustaining businesses to close due to the coronavirus pandemic, although the state has now begun to reduce some restrictions in certain areas.
The appeal — filed by the campaign of Danny DeVito, an Allegheny County Republican, realtor Kathy Gregory, “B and J” laundry, Blueberry Hill golf course and Caledonia Land Company — asserted that the Democratic governor’s order is doing “unprecedented damage to the economy.”
Without intervention, the petitioners say they and “tens of thousands of other businesses may not be able to recover from the severe financial distress caused by the Order.”
The Pennsylvania state Supreme Court rejected the challenge to the Wolf’s order last month.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom dispelled any rumors Wednesday afternoon that he has gotten a haircut during California’s social distancing guidelines.
Newsom, who is somewhat known for his slicked back tresses, said he is abiding by his own orders, much to the embarrassment of his 6-year-old daughter, Brooklyn.
He said Brooklyn offered to cut her father’s hair for him and even presented her craft scissors for the job, which Newsom said “certainly weren’t up for the task.”
Los Angeles, the most populated county in California, will begin to reopen Friday, along with the rest of the state.
Trails, golf courses, car dealerships, and florists are among those being allowed to reopen, as are retail shops for curbside pickup, according to county supervisor Kathryn Barger.
Los Angeles has seen 1,367 deaths due to Covid-19, making up for more than half of all fatalities in the state.
Health Director Barbara Ferrer emphasized that the lifting of restrictions will be slow, with other low risk, nonessential businesses reopening soon, but in a drastically modified way.
Employees should continue to telework whenever possible, Ferrer said.
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said it is “simply nonsensical” to suggest that every individual in the country needs to be tested in order for the country to reopen.
“Let’s dismiss a myth about tests right now. If we tested every single American in this country at this moment, we’d have to retest them an hour later and an hour later after that. Because at any moment you could theoretically contract this virus,” McEnany said in her second briefing as press secretary.
McEnany was asked specifically whether Americans should feel safe to return to work without receiving a coronavirus test — something President Trump and members of the administration routinely receive.
“We have to be strategic with our testing and we have done that so far,” McEnany added.
CNN’s Health Unit reports doctors say it’s not realistic to test all 328 million people in the US, especially since many states are still struggling to get enough tests or testing supplies.
So in order for the economy to reopen and stay open, the US will need to triple its number of tests performed every day — from 150,000 tests a day to at least 500,000, three Harvard researchers found.
And the proportion of test results that come back positive needs to be much lower. About 20% of US test results have been positive, which is “clearly way too high,” said Dr. Thomas Tsai, one of the Harvard researchers.
The World Health Organization said an adequate range of positive test results would be 3% to 12%. Germany and South Korea have already met that goal, Tsai said.
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CNN’s Holly Yan and Scottie Andrew contributed to this reporting.
The Department of Justice and the FBI are scrutinizing California’s large contracts for personal protective equipment after some early contracts went “awry,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday.
His comments come after details of the nearly $1 billion contract between the state of California and BYD, a Chinese car maker, for masks are still not public.
Newsom said he promise the contract will be published soon.
He said the urgency of the outbreak required quick action and says he is looking forward to making the contract public.
“We negotiated a pretty good price considering others were paying 12 bucks a mask and the federal government was paying six, seven, eight dollars per mask,” he said.
Last month, Newsom made the dramatic announcement on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show that the state had secured deals to acquire more than 200 million protective masks each month.
Since then, the terms of the agreement have been shrouded in secrecy.
Each mask will cost the state $3.30, according to Frank Girardot, spokesman for BYD, whose initials stand for Build Your Dreams, with a breakdown of $2.88 for the mask itself, $0.22 in shipping costs, and another $0.20 in duty.
Eneida Becot’s husband Ed worked at Brooklyn Hospital Center transporting patients for tests before losing his life to Covid-19 about one month ago.
Speaking with CNN’s Kate Bolduan this afternoon, she said he was likely exposed to the virus at the hospital before the “severity and the impact” was well known.
Becot said she wants the world to know that besides medical workers’ heroic fight against the pandemic, there are many like her husband, including transporters, security staff, housekeepers, clerks, food service works and others who are also putting their lives on the line each day.
“They also play a role and interact with patients,” she said. “They are just as important as the doctors and the nurses. They should be acknowledged and they play a vital role in [patient’s] care.”
The White House claimed Wednesday that Democrats acted in poor faith when attempting to schedule a hearing with Dr. Anthony Fauci, who the administration is blocking from testifying in the House even as it allows him to answer questions from the Republican-held Senate.
Kayleigh McEnany, the press secretary, said the Democratic appropriations chairwoman attempted a “publicity stunt” by refusing to answer the White House’s questions about the topic for the hearing.
“We don’t have time in the middle of a pandemic for publicity stunts,” McEnany said.
House Democrats have charged the White House with stonewalling their attempts at conducting oversight of the administration’s coronavirus response by disallowing administration officials from appearing without the explicit permission of chief of staff Mark Meadows.
McEnany said Meadows held three phone calls this week with House Appropriations Committee chairwoman Nita Lowey to ascertain the purpose of the hearing at which Fauci was requested to appear. Fauci has been heavily involved in the response to the coronavirus, the biggest public heath crisis in decades.
Lowey was “unable” to tell Meadows the subject matter for the hearing, according to McEnany.
She said as part of his appearance before a Senate committee next week, Fauci would be questioned by Democrats and Republicans alike. And she said the House needed to “act in good faith” in calling administration officials to testify.
Asked earlier this week why Fauci wouldn’t appear before House committees, President Trump said the House amounted to “Trump-haters” who were trying to destroy him politically.
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Self-identified Hispanics are testing positive at a higher rate than any other demographic in Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said at a news conference Wednesday.
He added: “Decades of institutional inequities and obstacles for members of our Latinx communities are now amplified in this pandemic. And while we can’t fix generations of history in the span of a few months, we must advance equity in our public health response today, everywhere and anywhere we can.”
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot previously said Wednesday that Latino residents make up the largest percentage of Covid-19 cases in the city. They represent 37% of Covid-19 cases in the city and 25% of deaths.
The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union on Wednesday said at least 27 meatpacking workers have died because Covid-19.
The UFCW also said that according to internal estimates, nearly 8,000 of their meat packing members have been “directly impacted” by Covid-19, including “those who have been hospitalized, tested positive, are awaiting test results, are showing symptoms, or have been exposed.”
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said she expects a “big increase in positive” coronavirus cases after employees at a Smithfield Foods processing plant in Sioux Falls were tested for Covid-19.
Noem said approximately 1,100 tests were given on the second day of the event, bringing the total number of tests to approximately 2,600.
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner has announced that the City Council has approved a $15 million rent relief fund for the Texas city.
The money for the program will come from the federal CARES Act, according to the statement. Landlords would need to agree to certain terms if they choose to participate in the program, and renters must meet certain requirements.
“The program is expected to help at 6,818 households,” the statement said.
