Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi issued stay-home orders. The Republican governors of those states — especially Ron DeSantis of Florida — had drawn criticism for not taking decisive action as the number of cases in the southern states rose.
Officials announced “enhanced counter-narcotics operations” in the Eastern Pacific and the Caribbean during the Coronavirus Task Force briefing. The US has intelligence that drug trafficking efforts may pick up as countries turn inward to focus on the pandemic, according to Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Trump said that the federal government is considering districting domestic travel between coronavirus hotspots, but isn’t anticipating a nationwide shelter-in-place mandate. During another lengthy coronavirus briefing, the president often meandered, boasting about the souther border wall and hearkening back to “caravans... marching through Mexico.
New York reported more than 83,000 cases of coronavirus and 1,941 deaths. Governor Andrew Cuomo also announced the closure of all New York City parks after residents failed to respect social distancing guidelines.
The vice president compared the coronavirus situation in the US to Italy, which has seen the highest number of deaths linked to the virus. Italy has already reported more than 13,000 coronavirus fatalities, and that number continues to climb.
The Dow dropped nearly 1,000 points as US markets continue to suffer amid the pandemic. Unemployment claims are also expected to jump in tomorrrow’s report after many major employers announced layoffs this week.
Bernie Sanders called on Wisconsin to delay its presidential primary, which is scheduled to take place next week. Wisconsin Democrats and civil rights advocates have already sued the state to press officials to ease absentee voting requirements for the primary.
The Pentagon is looking into sourcing and providing as many as 100,000 military-style body bags for civilian use, according to Bloomberg News.
Bloomberg reports:
The Pentagon is looking into buying more bags and will draw some initially from a stockpile of 50,000 it maintains, according to two people familiar with the request.
The move is a somber counterpoint to the Pentagon’s highly-praised deployment of two hospital ships to New York and Los Angeles to help alleviate pressure on regional hospitals overburdened by the pandemic.
The Defense Logistics Agency’s Troop Support unit manages the Pentagon’s stockpile of the green nylon, 94-inch by 38-inch body bags that are typically distributed to war zones. The unit has been in contact with the current contractor to assess its manufacturing capabilities but hasn’t yet placed a formal order, according to one of the people.
Yesterday, the White House projected that as many as 240,000 Americans could die from Covid-19, even if distancing meaures and other public health interventions are put in place.
The briefing has ended. I’ve got one for fact check for you:
Fact check: timeline
“After a month or so, I think once this passes, we’re not going to have to be hopefully worried too much about the virus,” Trump said, before wrapping up. That is a very optimistic timeline.
Projections, including ones presented by White House health officials, indicate that the disease will peak in many of the countries in May, and the pandemic will continue to affect people for long after. Federal health officials have said that the outbreak could last through next year, though distancing measures and other interventions may blunt the disease’s impact.
“As the trajectory of the outbreak continues, many people in the US will at some point, either this year or next, get exposed to this virus,” Nancy Messonnier of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told reporters last month. “And there’s a good chance many will become sick.”
Trump also deflected blame for the country’s slow start in testing, saying he “inherited a very broken system”.
Within 10 days of Chinese officials announcing the emergence of the new coronavirus, a German lab published a recipe for a diagnostic test. As the disease spread to the US, the CDC developed a more complicated test and produced errors and false positives.
Fact check: Are American coronavirus tests better?
Trump touted the quality of US testing, destribing them as “strong” tests.
In fact, some of the initial coronavirus tests sent out to states were seriously flawed – some did not even work. Part of the problem came from the CDC insisting it would manufacture the tests itself.
Other countries – after their first coronavirus case – swiftly asked private companies to develop their own tests. South Korea, which recorded its first case on the same day as the US, did so within a week
The US only allowed laboratories and hospitals to conduct their own tests on February 29, almost six weeks after the first case was confirmed.
“The federal agency shunned the World Health Organization test guidelines used by other countries and set out to create a more complicated test of its own that could identify a range of similar viruses,” ProPublica reported.
Mike Pence, defending the decision not to open up Obamacare exchanges during the crisis, said that “we have Medicaid for underprivileged Americans.”
Trump approved. “That was one of the greatest answers I’ve ever heard,” he said. “Because Mike was able to talk for 5 minutes and not answer your question.”
Asked why the federal government hasn’t declared a national shelter-in-place order, leaving it instead to governors, Trump emphasized that flexibility.
Florida doesn’t “have thousands of people who are positive,” he said, as an example. Florida, in fact has nearly 7,000 confirmed cases.
