US President Donald Trump speaks during the daily briefing on the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, at the White House on April 4, 2020, in Washington, DC. (Photo by JIM WATSON / AFP) (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images) Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
Summary
Here’s a summary of the latest events:
- Trump touts hydroxychloroquine as a cure for Covid-19 during his daily briefing. The anti-malaria drug could be ‘one of the biggest game-changers in the history of medicine’, Trump claimed, but there is no magic cure.
- The president accuses states of asking for unneeded supplies and media of spreading fake news. Trump used his briefing to further his assertions that media outlets were spreading false information about shortages of ventilators and protective equipment.
- Cruise ship docks in Florida with two dead and 12 testing positive for coronavirus. The Coral Princess pulls into Miami with 1,000 passengers and 878 crew, after being refused permission to dock in Fort Lauderdale.
- Adam Schiff said Trump was ‘decapitating’ intelligence leadership amid coronavirus crisis. The chair of the House intelligence committee made the comments to MSNBC after the president fired the inspector general of the US intelligence community late on Friday night.
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Andrew Cuomo thanks China for ventilators as New York prepares for coronavirus peak. The New York governor announced the state obtained 1,000 ventilators from billionaires Joseph and Clara Tsai and Alibaba founder Jack Ma. He also said Oregon would be lending 140 more.
- US has 278,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19. According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, there are have now been nearly 278,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the US, and more than 7,000 deaths. That toll will no doubt rise today.
Updated
President Trump has approved Arizona governor Doug Ducey’s request for a major disaster declaration.
“This continued collaboration will be crucial as we utilize all tools to combat this virus,” Ducey said.
NEW: Pres Trump has approved Arizona’s request for a Presidential Major Disaster Declaration. Thank you, @realDonaldTrump! This will bring more resources & assets to bear in our fight against #COVID19. We’re grateful for the Administration's continued partnership & collaboration.
— Doug Ducey (@dougducey) April 4, 2020
A release from Ducey’s office said the declaration will ensure federal resources will be supplied to Arizona to help provide access to mental health care, unemployment assistance, legal services, hazard mitigation, nutritional aid and crisis counseling.
As of Saturday morning, Arizona had reported 2,019 coronavirus cases and 52 deaths.
Here’s our colleague Oliver Milman’s story on Trump’s bold hydroxychloroquine claim during today’s briefing:
Faced with a global coronavirus pandemic that is increasingly centered upon the US, Donald Trump has touted several drugs that he claims can help tackle the outbreak.
The US president last week used a press conference to promote the use of hydroxychloroquine, a common anti-malaria drug, to treat Covid-19, saying: “I sure as hell think we ought to give it a try.”
He followed this with a tweet that claimed the use of the drug in combination with azithromycin, an antibiotic, could be “one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine”.
Trump was immediately contradicted by public health experts including his own top infectious diseases adviser, Dr Anthony Fauci, who warned that there was only “anecdotal evidence” that the drugs could be helpful.
Confronted with this disparity Trump, who has repeatedly made false and misleading assertions throughout the coronavirus crisis and indeed his entire presidency, responded by telling reporters that “I’m a smart guy” and “I’ve been right a lot.” The Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity seem to be satisfied by this assurance and have been promoting hydroxychloroquine on their shows.
But with some Americans turning to unconventional, and potentially deadly, treatments for coronavirus, medical experts have called for considered, accurate information to avoid exacerbating the pandemic.
Updated
With New Orleans having emerged as one of the national hotspots in the coronavirus outbreak, Louisiana state medical officials are preparing for Monday’s re-opening of the Ernest N Morial Convention Center as a makeshift, 1,000-bed medical support facility to ease the strain on local hospitals.
Dr Joseph Kanter, the assistant state health officer, said the field hospital could double its capacity to 2,000 beds by the end of the month if necessary, saying: “This isn’t even halfway over – it is not time to let up.
Standing in a convention hall housing a football field’s worth of white tents, nurses’ stations and portable handwashing basins, Kanter cast a quick glance around and said, “How great would it be if we didn’t need half this?”
The number of state residents stricken with Covid-19 jumped Saturday to 12,946, an increase of about 2,200 from the previous day. The New Orleans area continues to be the epicenter of the outbreak in Louisiana, with 3,966 known cases and 154 deaths reported out of Orleans Parish.
Neighboring Jefferson Parish has another 3,008 known cases, 95 of them fatal.
To what extent Saturday’s hike resulted from an increased testing rate is unclear. A total of 4,853 new test results came in. That was higher than the average the state was registering earlier in the week, but exactly how many of those were older results wasn’t clear.
The number of new deaths reported Saturday was lower than on Friday – 39 as opposed to 60 – but higher than Thursday’s toll of 37.
On the contrary, the number of Covid-19 patients in the hospital and on life-saving ventilator machines was higher than Friday: 1,726 and 571, respectively. Those will not alleviate the state’s concerns about a looming shortage in hospital bed space and ventilators, though officials announced Saturday that Louisiana would receive an additional 200 ventilators from the national stockpile.
Keeping bed space in New Orleans area hospitals as ample as possible is where the makeshift hospital at the convention center comes in.
The pop up facility – which is costing more than $90 million to build, equip and staff, largely through a contractor – is meant to treat COVID-19 patients who no longer need acute treatment at a hospital but still require care they can’t get at home, said Dr. Meghan Maslanka, the site’s medical operations manager.
Such patients – who need a hospital referral to be admitted – will be treated and observed in tent rooms that are about the size of backyard sheds.
Updated
In concluding the daily briefing, Trump says we are approaching a “horrendous” time in the outbreak across the United States.
“We are getting to that time where the numbers are going to peak and it is not going to be a good-looking situation,” the president says. “I really believe we’ve probably have never seen anything like these kind of numbers. Maybe during the war, during a world war, a world war one or two or something. But this is a war, all into itself, and it’s a terrible thing.”
Trump continues to lobby for hydroxychloroquine as a preventative for coronavirus.
“I just hope that hydroxychloroquine wins, coupled with perhaps the Z-Pak as we call it, depending totally on your doctors and the doctors there,” he says. “There is a possibility – a possibility – and I say it: what do you have to lose? I’ll say it again: what do you have to lose? Take it. I really think they should take it. But it’s their choice and it’s their doctor’s choice, or the doctors in the hospital. But hydroxychloroquine. Try it, if you like.”
Birx says the counties in and around New York, Detroit and New Orleans are on the upsides of their curves and will all hit together in the next seven days.
“They’re all on the upside of their curve of mortality, so you know when you get to the peak you come down the other side,” Birx says. “By the predictions that are in that healthdata.org, they’re predicting those three hotspots all of them hitting together in the next six to seven days.”
Trump steps in as Fauci is underscoring the efficacy of social distancing, circling back on his central theme of the day: the need to reopen the country as soon as possible.
“Mitigation does work but again, we’re not going to destroy our country,” the president says. “At a certain point you’ll lose more people this way through all of the problems caused. We have a big decision to make at a certain point. OK?”
Updated
Trump says he considered moving to relax stay-at-home orders nationwide so parishioners could celebrate Easter Sunday next week.
“Palm Sunday, tomorrow,” Trump says. “Think of it. We’re not going to churches on Palm Sunday. But think of next Sunday: Easter. And I brought it up before, I said, maybe we could allow a special for churches. Maybe we could talk about it. Maybe we could allow them with great separation outside on Easter Sunday. I don’t know, it’s something we should talk about. But somebody did say, ‘Well, then you’re sort of opening it up to ... do we want to take a chance on doing that when we’ve been doing so well?’
“But Easter Sunday! Palm Sunday, I’m going to be watching tomorrow live from Riverside, California – great church – but I’m going to be watching on a computer. On a laptop. I think on Easter maybe I’ll be watching on a laptop. How sad is it that we have Easter, Palm and Easter Sunday and people are watching on laptops and computers? It’s sad. But the job that this whole country has done is amazing.”
Updated
Trump, who says he’s tested negative for Covid-19 on two occasions, says he may start to take hydroxychloroquine, adding that it may be a “game changer” for treating the virus.
“If it were me, in fact, I might do it anyway,” Trump said about the drug, which has yet to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. “I may take it. OK? I may take it. And I’ll have to ask my doctors about that but I may take it.”
Hydroxychloroquine has long been used to treat malaria, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. Some very preliminary studies suggested it might help prevent coronavirus from entering cells, but experts have warned of its major potential side effects, especially for the heart.
Trump doubles down on hydroxychloroquine, saying he may take it as a prophylactic.
— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) April 4, 2020
TRUMP: I may take it. Okay?… I'll have to ask my doctors about that but I may take it.
Career scientists have warned that the science is unsettled + lupus patients currently need the drug. pic.twitter.com/ZBx6xHvvNG
Updated
Trump points out yesterday’s news that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign supports the president’s decision to ban foreign nationals who had been in China within the previous 14 days from entering the United States.
“Breaking news last night, you know that you saw that, where I think the probable presidential candidate for the Democrats will be Joe Biden, and he agreed that I was correct when I stopped people from China very early from coming into our country,” Trump says.
Shortly after, a reporter asks the president to comment on Biden’s tweet from roughly an hour ago, where the former vice-president said Trump “is not responsible for the coronavirus, but he is responsible for failing to prepare our nation to respond to it”.
Says Trump: “He didn’t write that. That was done by a Democrat operative. He doesn’t write. He’s probably not even watching right now. And if he is, he doesn’t understand what he’s watching.”
He adds: “They released [the tweet] at a strange time. Sort of strange time to release something like that, but he admitted I was right.”
Updated
“I thought he did a terrible job,” Trump says of Michael Atkinson, the inspector general of the US intelligence community who was fired on Friday night. He says Atkinson was a “total disgrace” and should have looked at the transcript of his “perfect call” with the Ukrainian president before taking any action.
Trump says he called the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, today: “I said I’d appreciate if they would release the amounts that we ordered” of hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug the president believes could be helpful as a therapeutic.
Dr Stephen Hahn, the FDA commissioner, follows Trump’s prepared remarks, saying “we are prioritizing this drug to come in for clinical trials and use if doctors think it’s appropriate”.
Updated
Trump says his administration is using the Defense Production Act “very powerfully”, saying Fema and HHS have ordered 180m N95 masks.
“We need the masks,” he says. “We don’t want other people getting them. That’s why we’re instuting a lot of Defense Production Act. You could call it retaliations because that’s what it is, it’s a retaliation. If people don’t give us what we need for our people, we’re going to be very tough.”
The president says 1,000 military personnel will deploy to New York City, which has continued to surge as a “hotspot” for Covid-19 cases.
Trump adds: “We will continue to use every power, every authority, every single resource we’ve got to keep our people healthy, safe, secure and get this thing over with. We want to finish this war. We have to get back to work. We have to open our country again. We have to open our country again. We don’t want to be doing this for months and months and months. We have to open our country again. This country wasn’t meant for this. Few were, few were. But we have to open our country again.”
Trump then lists the sports commissioners that he spoke with earlier today, adding Nascar president Steve Phelps, who was omitted from the handout provided by a White House spokesperson earlier in the day.
“These are all the great leaders of sport and they want to get back,” Trump says. “The sports weren’t designed for it. The whole concept of our nation wasn’t designed for it.”
Trump: "Absolutely I want fans back in the arenas" but says he’s “not committing” to August timeframe. pic.twitter.com/Z7DMecJd0n
— Bryan Armen Graham (@BryanAGraham) April 4, 2020
Updated
Trump opens today’s coronavirus task force briefing, alongside vice president Mike Pence, virus task force coordinator Dr Deborah Birx and infection disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci, by noting his administration’s efforts to work with state governments in New York, Texas and Louisiana to get temporary hospitals built and staffed, saying: “It’s just an incredible situation. There’s never been anything like this.”
He continues: “This will be probably the toughest week, between this week and next week, and there will be a lot of death, unfortunately. But a lot less death than if this wasn’t done, but there will be death. We’re looking for an obvious focus and the hardest-hit regions. Some of them are obvious and some are not so obvious. They spring up, they hit you like you got hit by a club. An area that wasn’t at all bothered – you look at what’s going on in New Jersey, the governor is doing an excellent job by the way – but how that sprang up. Every decision we’re making is made to save lives. It’s really our sole consideration. We want to save lives. We want as few lives lost as possible.
The president then immediately pivots toward the media: “It’s therefore critical that certain media outlets stop spreading false rumors and creating fear and even panic with the public,” he says. “It’s just incredible. I could name them but it’s the same ones. Always the same ones. I guess they looking for ratings. I don’t know what they’re looking for. So bad for our country. The people understand it. Look at the levels and approval ratings, they’re the lowest they’ve ever been for media. So bad for our country, so bad for the world. Put it together for a little while. Get this over with and then go back to your fake news.”
Updated
Trump gives daily coronavirus press conference
Trump opens today’s coronavirus task force briefing by noting his administration’s efforts to work with state governments in New York, Texas and Louisiana to get temporary hospitals built and staffed, saying: “It’s just an incredible situation. There’s never been anything like this.”
Updated
Although President Trump has resisted instituting a national shelter-in-place recommendation to combat coronavirus – in contrast with top infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci’s advice – 87% of US residents said they’re trying to stay home when possible, according to a new survey. A mere 7% of US residents said they are not making such an effort, while 6% reported being “unsure”.
The Huffington Post/YouGov poll also indicated overwhelming support of stay-at-home mandates, with 79% of US residents saying their states were right in issuing such orders.
The survey also found that approximately 61% of US residents would keep staying home this month when possible even if their states started lifting restrictions. About 19% said they would return to living “as normally as possible if restrictions were lifted”, per the research. The New York Post appears to have first outlet other than Huffington Post reporting on this study, which was based on 1,000 completed interviews conducted from 27 to 31 March.
“Those findings shouldn’t be taken as absolute or immovable. People aren’t necessarily great at predicting their own actions in a future hypothetical situation. That’s especially true now, with the outbreak continuing to rapidly unfold and statements from the White House varying greatly in tone and content,” the study noted. “The results, however, do suggest the majority of the public is hunkering down not merely out of duress, but also out of their own genuine concerns – and that they’re prepared to continue doing so for at least some time.”
Just about 25% of US residents said they thought things would soon return to normal, as 62% expected “lasting effects on the nation”.
“The rest are unsure what will happen.”
The survey, released Thursday, comes as several states have remained slow to enact efforts in the fight against Covid-19. Alabama’s stay-at-home order is only just going into effect Saturday at 5pm,. Arkansas has not implemented this kind of mandate. Iowa, Nebraska, as well as North and South Dakota also have not, per reports.
The White House announces the president has issued disaster declarations for the states of Wisconsin and Nebraska, bringing the overall count to 36 states, the District of Columbia and four US territories.
The declarations are issued as Trump is set to speak at the White House coronavirus task force press briefing, which is due to begin shortly.
ESPN reports that Donald Trump hopes to have fans back in stadiums and arenas by August and wants the NFL, America’s most popular sports league, to start as scheduled in September.
The president held a conference call with commissioners and leaders from a variety of US sports leagues on Saturday. Professional sports have shut down in the last few weeks as the Covid-19 pandemic has taken hold across America. The NBA was the first league to shut on 11 March, and it was soon followed by MLS and NHL. The start of the baseball season has also been postponed.
Health officials have not made it clear whether they find Trump’s timetable realistic, but this summer’s Olympics, which had been due to take place in late July and end in early August have been postponed until 2021. The NFL has previously said it expects to start as scheduled in September in front of fans.
California governor Gavin Newsom was asked about Trump’s reported target for NFL season during his daily press briefing in Sacramento, saying: “I’m not anticipating that happening in this state.”
California governor Gavin Newsom pushes back on Trump's reported comments from today's call that he believes the NFL season should start on time in September with fans in the stands: "I'm not anticipating that happening in this state." pic.twitter.com/QQ6QxapZ9Z
— Bryan Armen Graham (@BryanAGraham) April 4, 2020
“Our decision on that basis at least here in the state of California will be determined by the facts, will be determined by the health experts, will be determined by our capacity to meet this moment, bend the curve and have the appropriate community surveillance and testing to competently determine whether or not that’s appropriate,” Newsom said. “Right now I’m just focused on the immediate, but that’s not something I anticipate happening in the next few months.”
California governor Gavin Newsom said the state’s coronavirus test backlog has been reduced to 13,000 tests pending, down from 60,000 on Friday, during his daily briefing from Sacramento. A total of 126,700 Californians have been tested for the virus, according to the governor.
Newsom pointed to the recent peak of 59,500 individuals with results pending in California, admitting: “The testing space has been a challenging one for us and I own that.”
“We’ve substantially reduced that backlog,” Newsom said. “A lot of that has to do with the commercial labs stepping up.”
The governor also shared California’s updated Covid-19 figures as of Saturday: 2,300 hospitalizations with 1,008 ICU patients (a 10.9% increase over Friday) and 12,026 known cases (a 12.4% increase).
He also announced a newly launched website – covid19supplies.ca.gov – where citizens can donate or sell personal protective equipment like N95 masks to the state. He said the state has distributed more than 41m N95 masks in addition to other protective gear.
“We are purchasing supplies at scale,” he said. “Forty-one million N95 masks we’ve already delivered. We are committed to hundreds of millions more. And that requires diligence, that requires a level of expertise and we can never let speed become the enemy of real results that ultimately deliver on our promise.”
Reuters has cited two sources that allege Donald Trump pressed federal officials to make anti-malarial drugs available to treat Covid-19, despite the fact that they were untested on the virus. Reuters reports that the government then took the unusual step of telling doctors they had the option of prescribing the drugs, despite the fact that dosages had not been peer reviewed.
“The president is short-circuiting the process with his gut feelings,” Jeffrey Flier, a former dean of Harvard Medical School, told Reuters. “We are in an emergency and we need to rely on our government to ensure that all these potential therapies are tested in the most effective and objective way.”
The White House told Reuters that Trump had not launched a “pressure campaign” over the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine.
“The President’s top priority is the health and safety of the American people which is why he has brought together the federal government and private sector, including doctors, scientists, and medical researchers, for an unprecedented collaboration to expedite vaccine development,” said the statement.
Joe Rogan, host of the hugely popular podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, has said he would vote for Donald Trump over Joe Biden in the presidential election. Rogan gave his views during Friday’s edition of his podcast, which regularly tops the iTunes chart for downloads.
During a conversation with his guest Eric Weinstein, the managing director of Thiel Capital, talk turned to the upcoming presidential elections. Weinstein said he would not vote for either Trump or Biden, the probable Democratic candidate in November’s election. Rogan said that the Democrats had made “morons” out of voters by appearing to favour Biden as their candidate.
“I’d rather vote for Trump than [Biden],” said Rogan. “I don’t think he can handle anything. You’re relying entirely on his cabinet. If you want to talk about an individual leader who can communicate, he can’t do that. And we don’t know what the fuck he’ll be like after a year in office.
“The pressure of being President of the United States is something that no one has ever prepared for. The only one who seems to be fine with it is Trump, oddly enough. He doesn’t seem to be aging at all or in any sort of decline. Obama, almost immediately, started looking older. George W [Bush], almost immediately, started looking older.”
Biden turns 78 in November and Rogan described him as “very old” and said the senator’s famous verbal slip-ups were “not a normal way to communicate unless he’s high.”
Rogan has previously endorsed Biden’s rival for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders, who is a year older than Biden. “He’s been insanely consistent his entire life,” said Rogan. “He’s basically been saying the same thing, been for the same thing for his whole life. And that in and of itself is a very powerful structure to operate from.”
The president of the Human Rights Campaign said in January that Sanders should reconsider accepting Rogan’s endorsement due to the fact that the podcaster has “attacked transgender people, gay men, women, people of colour and countless marginalised groups at every opportunity”.
A few more details on our earlier post on jails in New York. The city’s jails department said that as of Saturday morning, 305 staff members and 251 incarcerated persons have tested positive for the virus.
With regard to the new parole lawsuit, which opposes the automatic jailing of people accused of violations before their alleged infractions can be weighed, the state prisons department, says it’s reviewing the suit and can’t comment on pending litigation.
The department said that in response to the circumstances, it is changing longtime policies, and making new ones, to protect those in the prison system, while maintaining public safety.
Donald Trump spoke with commissioners and leaders from major US sports leagues and tournaments today. Sports in the US – and around the world – have been halted during the pandemic with major consequences for the finances of teams and athletes. Among those present on the conference call with the president were commissioners from the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, WNBA and MLS. UFC president Dana White, a long-time ally of Trump was also on the call as was Vince McMahon of WWE.
“Today, President Donald J Trump spoke by telephone with commissioners of major league sports to discuss the all-of-America response to Covid-19. The President recognized the good work being done by many teams and players to care for their communities, workforces, and fan bases across the Nation,” said White House spokesman Judd Deere. “The commissioners thanked President Trump for his national leadership and for his interest in the sports industry. President Trump encouraged them to continue to support their fellow Americans during this challenging time.”
Trump has clashed with several figures from the world of sports during his presidency. He described NFL players who knelt in protest at police brutality as “sons of bitches”, while the NBA’s Golden State Warriors declined to attend the White House for the traditional visit after winning two championships.
Updated
As coronavirus continues to tear through US jails and prisons, New York civil rights advocates filed a lawsuit Friday opposing the automatic jailing of people accused of parole violations before their alleged infractions can be weighed.
Lawyers are demanding an opportunity for the release of more than 1,000 people held in New York City jails “in light of the uncontrolled spread of the coronavirus and the dangerous public health conditions in these facilities.” This Manhattan federal court civil complaint names governor Andrew Cuomo and the state’s top parole official as defendants.
New York Civil Liberties Union and The Legal Aid Society explain that the state’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision must hold a hearing within 90 days to determine an alleged parole violation – and whether parole should subsequently be revoked.
Some of these “technical” violations might be something as minor as neglecting to report a new address, change in employment, or missing a parole officer appointment. Several other lawsuits have been filed this week demanding the release of detained parolees from city jails due to Covid-19.
For approximately 20% of parole “re-arrests”, these revocation hearings happen after the 90-day period, “and during the coronavirus pandemic these hearings have been suspended almost completely”.
“Before that hearing, there is no opportunity to determine if the person even needs to be in jail simply to wait for that hearing,” advocates say.
Because of this dramatic slowdown, people are languishing in jail “indefinitely” – all the while facing heightened danger from Covid-19. The lawsuit claims that as of Friday, 239 inmates in New York City’s infamous Rikers Island jail have coronavirus. In excess of 2,000 people are now in quarantine units for potential exposure – approximately 50% of Rikers’ population, advocates say.
“At current rates of infection, the virus’s ‘attack rate’ in New York jails – that is, the rate at which the population is being infected – is 64 times higher than the average in the United States of America and seven times higher than New York City,” the lawsuit maintains.
While Cuomo did recently announce that he intends to release up to 600 persons held on technical parole violations due to coronavirus, slightly over 100 have been released as of the lawsuit’s filing, lawyers note.
Neither the governor nor state corrections department immediately responded to a request for comment on the federal action.
New Jersey cases reach 34,124
New Jersey governor Phil Murphy said the number of Covid-19 cases statewide rose to 34,124 on Saturday at his daily coronavirus briefing in the state capital of Trenton. A total of 846 have died, eclipsing the number of New Jersey lives lost in the 9/11 terror attacks.
“We are today reporting that another 200 residents of passed due to Covid-19 related complications,” he says. “Our state total now sits at 846 precious lives lost. Let me put this in a proper, yet very sobering context. We have now lost nearly 100 more of our fellow New Jerseyans to Covid-19 that we did on the September 11th attacks. Please let that sink in for a moment. This pandemic is writing one of the greatest tragedies in our state’s history and just as we have committed to never forget the lives lost on 9/11, we must commit to never forgetting those we are losing to this pandemic.”
He adds: “Let’s just all remember again: this is war. We are in a war. How do you win wars? You don’t panic and you don’t go business-as-usual. You win it by being smart, aggressive, proactive, shooting straight with each other, being honest about the toll that is both before us and will continue to grow. Let’s not kid each other. You win wars by not turning on each other, but to the contrary, coming together. This extraordinary diverse state coming together as one family.
“You win a war because your work harder than the next folks. You win it because you show courage as we’re seeing every single day up and down this state, from our frontline healthcare workers, to every single one of the nine million of us, including folks right now at home by themselves doing exactly what we need. Every single one of us is a hero right now. Every single one of us must do our part if we are to flatten the curve of this virus, allow our healthcare system to be able to deal with it properly and then emerge on the other side. And unequivocally may I say, if we all do our part, there is no question in my mind we will win this war and we will emerge from it stronger as one New Jersey family, more together than ever before.”
Updated
Adam Schiff, chair of the House intelligence committee, said Donald Trump is “decapitating the leadership of the intelligence community in the middle of a national crisis” and “settling scores” after the president fired Michael Atkinson, the inspector general of the US intelligence community, late on Friday night.
“It’s unconscionable,” Schiff said during an interview on MSNBC on Saturday. “And of course it sends a message throughout the federal government and in particular to other inspectors general that if they do their job as this professional did and Michael Atkinson was a complete professional, they too may be fired by a vindictive president.”
House speaker Nancy Pelosi echoed Schiff’s alarm, calling the firing of the Trump appointee “a brazen act against a patriotic public servant who has honorably performed his duty”.
Here’s a bit more on New York’s ventilator hunt from our health reporter:
Chinese billionaires and the state of Oregon facilitated ventilator donations to New York to treat patients with Covid-19, as the pandemic accelerates toward a peak.
New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced the state obtained 1,000 ventilators from billionaires Joseph and Clara Tsai and Alibaba founder Jack Ma, while President Trump again promoted an unproven malaria drug as treatment for Covid-19 on Twitter.
“We’re not yet at the apex,” said Cuomo, who described that crescendo of cases as, “the number one point of engagement of the enemy.” In addition to the 1,000 ventilators obtained from China, Cuomo said Oregon loaned New York 140 ventilators.
Current projections put the peak of the pandemic anywhere between four and 14 days away. Officials hope physical distancing imposed across the state will slow the spread of the disease, and forestall the possibility of running out of ventilators and beds, even as Cuomo admitted he hoped to see the apex soon so the experience would end.
The pandemic, “stresses this country, this state, in a way nothing else has frankly in my lifetime,” Cuomo said.
The briefing was another contrast in leadership between Cuomo and Trump. Where Cuomo’s briefings have alarming statistics, his frank descriptions of shortages and personal struggles have been praised across the country.
On Saturday, Cuomo said the state had a signed contract for 17,000 ventilators, which he was later told could not be filled because many had already been purchased by China.
Updated
Justin Trudeau, speaking at his daily Covid-19 briefing, says Canada won’t bring retaliatory measures against the United States after the Trump administration announced it would prevent the export of N95 protective masks. The Associated Press reports:
Trudeau says he will speak to President Trump in the coming days. He says his officials are having constructive conversations with American officials.
Trudeau says he will tell Trump both countries are interlinked in ways that it would damage both if supply chains are cut. The prime minister says Canada ships gloves and testing kits to the U.S and notes materials from the N95 masks originate in Canada.
Canadian nurses also cross the bridge in Windsor to work in the Detroit medical system everyday.
Manufacturing giant 3M says there are significant humanitarian implications of ceasing N95 masks to health care workers in Canada and Latin America, where 3M is a critical supplier of respirators.
Cuomo has finished his daily briefing from Albany, where he warned the hardest days lie ahead for the state that’s become the central hotbed of the pandemic in the United States.
“If there was anything I could do to accelerate getting it over, I would,” he says. “In some ways I want to get to that apex. I want to get on the other side of that apex and let’s just slide down that mountain. On the other hand we have to be ready for the fight and we have to handle that fight. And that’s where we are.
“So what do we do? You have to get to through it. There is no simple answer here. You’re not going to wish this away. You have to get through it and you have to get through it intelligently, saving as many lives as you can. And that’s hard work and that’s perseverance and that’s mutuality and that’s community and that’s finding your better self and that’s finding your inner strength and dealing with a situation that is almost unmanageable on every level, because you are out of control.
“And this is a painful, disorienting experience.
“But we find our best self, our strongest self [and] this day will end and we will get through it and we will get to the other side of the mountain and we will be the better for it. But we have to do what we have to do between now and then and that’s just what we doing here.”
Updated
Cuomo says the number of hospitalizations on Long Island has grown exponentially in the last few days, saying he doesn’t know whether it’s because city residents are fleeing or seeking treatment there.
“We’ve been saying for the past few days, watch Long Island, because it’s like a fire, spreading,” he says.
Cases in Long Island’s Nassau County are at 13,346 (up 1,322 from yesterday), the second-highest in the state.
Suffolk County cases are at 11,370 (up 1,216 from yesterday).
Trump touts unproven anti-malarial drug – again
While Andrew Cuomo is speaking in New York, Trump has continued to be busy on Twitter, mostly retweeting but adding comments of his own. To wit:
I agree with this. Watch! https://t.co/CouUHHu13t
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 4, 2020
The president’s belief in the possibility that hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug, might be an effective treatment for Covid-19 is not shared with his leading public health experts on the White House task force.
On Fox News on Friday, infectious diseases expert Dr Anthony Fauci said: “We still need to do the definitive studies to determine whether any intervention, not just this one, is truly safe and effective. But when you don’t have that information, it’s understandable why people might want to take something anyway even with the slightest hint of being effective.”
All this, of course, does not stop Trump returning to the well on Twitter and at White House briefings.
Here’s Oliver Milman’s look at the issue:
The president carries on:
Great! https://t.co/2BL1hj32zJ
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 4, 2020
It often pays to check who Trump is retweeting. John Solomon, it should be noted, is a columnist whose work for The Hill was used in attempts to smear opponents of the president during the Ukraine affair which led to Trump’s impeachment.
Trump has obviously been scrolling down Solomon’s profile page this morning:
Extraordinary interview with Rep. @Jim_Jordan about FISA abuses, FBI failures and where John Durham might end up. https://t.co/AUCP8PHTNL
— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) April 3, 2020
Late on Friday night, Trump made his latest move against a leader of the intelligence community, in this case one who played a key role in the impeachment process:
Cuomo says China will 'facilitate donation' of 1,000 ventilators
Cuomo says that the Chinese government will facilitate a donation of 1,000 ventilators to arrive into JFK airport today, saying: “This is a big deal and it’s going to make a significant difference for us.”
He’s pressed on the impending reality that New York will not have enough ventilators for admissions, which will require two patients on the same ventilator.
“Splitting is not ideal,” he says. “You go to war with what you have, not with what you need.”
Updated
The state of Oregon is sending 140 ventilators to New York, Cuomo says, calling it “astonishing” and “unexpected”.
“I want this all to be over,” the governor says. “It’s only gone on for 30 days since our first case. It feels like an entire lifetime. I think we all feel the same. This stresses this country, this state in a way nothing else has frankly in my lifetime. It stresses us on every love. The economy is stressed, the social fabric is stressed, social systems are stressed, transportation is stressed. It’s right across the board.
But the most difficult level is the human level. It is for me, anyway. And it’s every day and it’s everywhere.”
He adds: “You can’t even quantify the effect on society and the effect on individuals and the burden that we’re dealing with.”
Updated
New York governor Andrew Cuomo opens Saturday’s daily coronavirus briefing with the latest numbers:
- Covid-19 cases in New York City: 63,606 (up 6,147 from Friday)
- Covid-19 cases in New York state: 113,704 (up 10,841 from Friday)
- Total people tested (283,621)
- Total people hospitalized: 15,905 (up 1,095 from yesterday)
- Total ICU admissions: 4,126 (up 395 from yesterday)
A woman is Florida is seeking to gain sole custody of her two-year-old son during the Covid-19 pandemic because the boy’s father works in the emergency services.
According to court papers, Tabatha Sams currently shares custody with her son’s father, Stephen Thilmony, who is a firefighter and emergency medicine technician. Thilmony’s fiancee, meanwhile, is an emergency room nurse.
“As Covid-19 has spread throughout the United States, medical professionals and first responders have been subjected to coronavirus at a higher rate, due to their increased exposure to individuals testing positive for the virus,” Sams said in the court papers.
In the papers, Thilmony is quoted as saying he is not endangering his son. “We are taking proper measures to protect ourselves and him,” Thilmony said.
The Daily Show has put together clips of politicians and media figures giving their views on Covid-19 in the early stages of the pandemic. Let’s just say some of the quotes have not aged well:
Hannity. Rush. Dobbs. Ingraham. Pirro. Nunes. Tammy. Geraldo. Doocy. Hegseth. Schlapp. Siegel. Watters. Dr. Drew. Henry. Ainsley. Gaetz. Inhofe. Pence. Kudlow. Conway. Trump.
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) April 3, 2020
Today, we salute the Heroes of the Pandumbic. pic.twitter.com/35WLDgoHcf
There has been plenty of concern about the potential for mass casualties in US jails during the Covid-19 pandemic. A public health expert has also warned outbreaks that start in jails could pose risks for the wider community.
“The prison population in and of itself has a fairly sizable, vulnerable population within that, have a lot of chronic conditions, other types of infections,” Dr Barun Mathema, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia University, told CNN. “We should also ensure that what happens in a prison, or a jail for that matter, does not pose an undue risk to the community. In this case, we know we have ample examples from many infectious diseases.”
As fatalities rise in the United States, the shortage of space to store bodies is becoming a concern. It’s a problem that authorities had to confront in countries hit by the Covid-19 epidemic earlier than the US: for example, in Spain a Madrid ice rink was used to store bodies before burial. Med Alliance Group, a medical distributor in Illinois, has reported being inundated with requests for refrigerated trailers.
“They’re coming from all over: From hospitals, health systems, coroner’s offices, VA facilities, county and state health departments, state emergency departments and funeral homes,” Christie Penzol, a spokeswoman for Med Alliance, told the Associated Press. “It’s heart-wrenching.”
Penzol added that the company has already rented out all its trailers and there is an 18-week wait for the materials needed to build new ones.
Fox News host Sean Hannity hit back against intense criticism of the conservative network’s coronavirus coverage, even claiming in a new interview that he was ahead of most media in taking Covid-19 seriously.
Hannity’s statements to Newsweek were in response to a 1 April open letter signed by 74 journalism professors that lambasted Fox News for allegedly spreading “misinformation” about the outbreak. The professors’ missive directly cited Hannity’s statement that the Democrats and media overplayed coronavirus to “bludgeon Trump with this new hoax.”
Their letter came several days before a report in The Daily Beast that Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan were bracing for lawsuits over Fox News’s coronavirus coverage.
Asked about his statement that Democrats and the media were using Covid-19 “to bludgeon Trump,” Hannity responded, “Many of them did.”
“We are in the middle of the huge pandemic and where’s the Democrat saying, ‘You know, I didn’t agree with the travel ban at the time, but it was the right decision.’ Politics trumps truth in their world.”
“It’s the same Democrats, media mob and liberal professors who are so lazy they won’t even look at what I’ve said about the virus. They just go with their narrative. I never called it a ‘hoax,’” Hannity said when subsequently asked about his “hoax” comment. “I said it was a hoax for them to be using it as a bludgeon on Trump. And they are. Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi are talking about an investigation. Now? In the middle of a pandemic?”
Hannity also said “Go to my website and you’ll see irrefutable evidence that I have taken this seriously way before most in the media did. I warned in January that it was dangerous because it was highly contagious, but some people were asymptomatic, so it would spread quickly.”
The letter, addressed to both Murdoch and his son, claimed “viewers of Fox News, including the president of the United States, have been regularly subjected to misinformation relayed by the network – false statements downplaying the prevalence of Covid-19 and its harms…”
The professors further claimed that Fox News offered “misleading recommendations of activities that people should undertake to protect themselves and others, including casual recommendations of untested drugs; false assessments of the value of measures urged upon the public by their elected political leadership and public health authorities.”
Mediaite pointed out that while Fox News has taken some actions that seemingly view coronavirus more seriously – with Hannity and other talking heads such as Tucker Carlson appearing in a PSA, for example – there have still been questionable moments.
On Friday night, Carlson criticized infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci’s call for a national stay-at-home mandate.
“More than 10 million Americans have already lost their jobs. Imagine another year of this. That would be national suicide, and yet, that is what Anthony Fauci is suggesting, at least,” Carlson said. “Now, we’re not suggesting that Fauci wants to hurt America. We don’t think he does, he seems like a very decent man. But Fauci is not an economist or for that matter someone who fears being unemployed himself. Like most of the people around him.”
Updated
Probable Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has issued a statement calling for Donald Trump to appoint a “supply commander” to “co-ordinate critical materials for all 50 states and US territories”.
Biden has been seeking a call with Trump to discuss the coronavirus response. No word that it’s happened yet.
Marc Caputo of Politico, meanwhile, makes a wry point: MSNBC host Rachel Maddow called for essentially the same thing last night.
Here’s some further reading: Washington bureau chief David Smith again – busy lad – with a look at where the 2020 election stands with the nation in the grip of Covid-19:
Biden finds himself holed up in his basement in Wilmington, Delaware, struggling to break into the national conversation through TV interviews and virtual campaign events. Trump has been denied the lifeblood of rallies but switched to his other favourite medium – television – with daily coronavirus taskforce briefings from the White House. Polls suggest he is benefiting moderately from a “rally around the flag effect”
Still no sign of the president, whose thumbs would often have twitched towards his iPhone by this time of a Saturday.
Over at the Washington Post, meanwhile, media columnist Margaret Sullivan has an interesting take this morning on Andrew and Chris Cuomo’s developing coronavirus double act, in which the New York governor and his CNN anchor (and Covid-19 patient) brother regularly conduct interviews full of endearing brotherly bickering.
“Not everyone approves of the Cuomo Brothers show,” Sullivan writes.
This is something I cannot wrap my head around,” Fabian Reinbold, Washington bureau chief for a large German news organization, told me in an email this week. “It would be considered highly inappropriate and corrupt back home.”
He was particularly taken aback by Chris Cuomo’s choice to actually participate in Thursday’s [New York governor’s] news conference, piped in via videoconference to hold forth to the gathered press corps. He wore a baseball cap emblazoned with the name of his CNN show, “Cuomo Primetime,” further blurring the roles of brother and anchor.
That moment may have proved too much for competitors Fox News and MSNBC, who cut away from the New York governor’s briefing soon after.
Others have questioned the journalistic propriety of repeatedly interviewing one’s brother on prime-time TV, as Chris Cuomo has been doing for weeks.
Jon Allsop at Columbia Journalism Review, for one, disapproves. He reasonably suggests a less fraught approach: “There are plenty of ways Chris Cuomo could communicate about his health with CNN viewers while also taking time to recuperate. While he’s out, a colleague could talk with his brother.”
All that said, Sullivan also points out that in a nation grown used to the open nepotism of the Trump administration, where the president’s daughter and son-in-law double as his chief advisers, perhaps the Cuomo Show is relatively small beer.
It also seems necessary to say, again, that it really is quite endearing:
US has 278,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19
Good morning and welcome to another day of US coronavirus coverage.
According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, there are have now been nearly 278,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the US, and more than 7,000 deaths. That toll will no doubt rise today.
We’ll expect to hear from New York governor Andrew Cuomo, about conditions in the state worst hit by far. Those Johns Hopkins figures put confirmed cases in New York at around 103,000 and deaths at nearly 3,000. Here’s Daniel Strauss’s look at how Cuomo has navigated the crisis, relations with Donald Trump and a national spotlight which has also landed on his younger brother Chris Cuomo, a CNN anchor who was this week found to have contracted Covid-19.
There is also a White House briefing due at the earlier-than-usual time of 3.30pm ET, which is 8.30pm UK.
On Friday, Donald Trump made his usual round of headlines at the briefing room podium, not least by announcing new federal guidelines that say people should wear face masks in public, which his wife Melania tweeted out as he spoke, but then saying he was not going to do so.
The president also attacked reporters, criticised Cuomo over his appeals for ventilators to fight an expected surge in New York cases, and defended his son-in-law Jared Kushner for comments about the federal healthcare equipment stockpile at the briefing the day before.
Ed Pilkington, our chief reporter, has another in-depth read about Trump’s struggle to respond to the coronavirus outbreak. It’s here:
There’s been no word from Trump on Twitter yet this morning but there’s always time for that to change. For some further reading as this Saturday begins, here’s a key quote from Washington bureau chief David Smith’s fascinating interview with Jon Karl, ABC News’ chief White House correspondent and a long-term Trump foil whose new book, obviously written before the pandemic, is called Front Row at the Trump Show:
We’re at a point where nearly half the country doesn’t believe what this president and White House says and we have nearly half the rest of the country that’s been told not to believe what they see in a newspaper or see in television news or any other form of mainstream news.
“That’s a deeply troubling, deeply dangerous place to be where there isn’t a shared agreement and sense of some basic facts, especially now where reliable information, and believing you have reliable information, can literally be a matter of life and death.”
More, as they say, follows. Here’s David’s piece in full:
