Good morning,
The White House has backed up Donald Trump’s claim that he is taking a daily dose of hydroxychloroquine to protect himself against the coronavirus. The FDA has warned against using the anti-malarial drug for such a purpose, saying it could cause heart problems, but the president’s official physician, Sean Conley, wrote a memo stating that, following discussions with the president, they concluded that the “potential benefit from treatment outweighed the relative risks”.
On Tuesday Trump said he was considering imposing a ban on travel to the US from Brazil, which endured its biggest daily Covid-19 death toll so far. The US remains the country with by far the largest number of confirmed cases, a statistic the president described as a “badge of honour”:
You know when you say that we lead in cases, that’s because we have more testing than anybody else. It’s a great tribute to the testing and all of the work that a lot of professionals have done.
Do the drugs work? Peter Beaumont weighs up the risks and supposed – though unproven – benefits of taking hydroxychloroquine.
New York’s contact tracing plan will be harder than it sounds
Contact tracing is a key pillar of New York’s strategy for safely reopening after lockdown, and the state is busy recruiting thousands for its new test and trace corps. But experts say pulling off the plan in a densely packed city of 8.6 million people will be a major challenge. As the former CDC director Tom Frieden, who is now working on New York state’s contact tracing effort, tells Miranda Bryant: “All the things that we love about New York City … make it more susceptible and more challenging to do contact tracing.”
Across the country in California, a first-in-the-nation plan to offer $125m in coronavirus relief to undocumented workers has got off to a chaotic start, with the website crashing and phone lines overwhelmed. Meanwhile, more than 3,200 of the state’s prison inmates have contracted Covid-19, with their families and other advocates saying they fear mass fatalities.
Elsewhere in the US …
Officials in Detroit say they have restored residents’ water supply to allow for basic hygiene amid the pandemic, but some families claim they are still cut off from clean running water.
Thousands of visitors have flocked to Yellowstone national park after it reopened on Monday, while a new report has found that millions of Americans lack access to quality green spaces.
People with type 1 diabetes face a higher risk from Covid-19
People with type 1 diabetes are more likely to die of Covid-19 than those with type 2, according to figures from the UK’s National Health Service. The NHS study found that almost a third of all the coronavirus deaths in English hospitals were associated with diabetes, and that those with type 1 diabetes were three and a half times more likely to die if they caught Covid-19 than non-diabetics.
The coronavirus crisis won’t slow down climate change
The world’s daily carbon dioxide emissions have dropped more dramatically during the global coronavirus lockdowns than at any other moment since records began – a fall of more than 17% by early April compared with last year. But experts say the temporary hiatus from fossil fuel consumption will likely make little difference to the world’s ability to stave off catastrophic levels of global heating.
Renewable energy growth is slowing. The pandemic has not just curtailed fossil fuel consumption, it has also caused a slowdown in the growth of clean energy, according to the International Energy Agency.
In other news …
The plaintiff in Roe v Wade says her later anti-abortion stance was ‘all an act’. Norma McCorvey, known as Jane Roe for the landmark 1973 supreme court case, made the confession shortly before her death in 2017, saying she had been paid by conservative groups to come out against abortion in the 1990s.
Palestine is ending its security cooperation with the US and Israel. The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, made the declaration on Tuesday, citing the imminent threat of Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank.
A top Nasa official has quit days before a historic space mission. Doug Loverro, the agency’s human spaceflight chief, reportedly resigned over a breach of procurement rules – just as two astronauts prepare to head for space from US soil for the first time since the space shuttle programme ended in 2011.
Singapore sentenced a man to death via Zoom. Punithan Genasan, a 37-year-old Malaysian, faces capital punishment for his role in a 2011 drug deal, in the city-state’s first case in which such a sentence has been delivered remotely.
Great reads
Social Distance: a graphic short story by Mark Haddon
The award-winning author has been inspired by the lockdown to write this affecting short story about solitude, accompanied by his own distinctive illustrations. It’s “the first time I’ve written a story for adults in which the pictures do the heavy lifting”, he says.
Peter Gallagher: ‘It has a lot to do with how I look’
The star of The OC and Sex, Lies and Videotape has spent much of his career playing bad guys. It’s because of his good looks, he tells Elle Hunt. “When I was younger, I had the kind of face that if I saw me walking down the street, I’d say: ‘What an asshole!’”
Opinion: Cuomo is no coronavirus hero
The governor of New York had a shameful record before the pandemic hit, say Lyta Gold and Nathan Robinson – so how did his disastrous handling of the crisis make him the most popular politician in the country?
There’s something disturbing about Cuomo being hailed as the hero of the pandemic when he should rightly be one of the villains.
Last Thing: listen to a day of British wildlife
In the 1960s and 70s, the wildlife recordist Lawrence Shove collected the sounds of the British forest. The Guardian was given access to his collection, and put together this immersive soundscape of springtime wildlife. It’s a temporary cure for cabin fever.
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