April 15 coronavirus news

The governor of Oregon joined with Washington and California this week to discuss a plan for ending the coronavirus economic shutdown, but Gov. Kate Brown says people shouldn't expect everything to be back to normal all at once.

“This is not a light switch going on or off,” Brown told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Tuesday night. “This is going to be making a change, testing it, modeling it, seeing whether it works, and then if it does, you can make another change.”

Gov. Brown says Oregon needs to “roughly double” its testing capacity before she would feel comfortable with a broad lifting of restrictions, in addition to making sure health care workers have enough personal protective equipment.

Brown says there may be some adaptations made in response to the pandemic that don’t go away even after businesses reopen. 

"It's going to be different": It comes as Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said that there would be a long path before all coronavirus restrictions were lifted and the state returned to normal.

DeWine said that there were currently no plans to restart basketball, college and universities in Ohio.

“Until there is a vaccine -- this monster is going to be working around us. When we start opening businesses and schools back up, it's going to be different,” Gov. DeWine said.

The US coronavirus death toll reached 25,757 on Tuesday evening, an increase of 2,129 deaths today -- the highest number of fatalities in a single day.

Previously, the most US coronavirus deaths reported in a single day was 2,074, on April 10, according to data supplied by Johns Hopkins University.

There are now more than 605,000 cases of the novel coronavirus in the US -- the largest single epidemic worldwide.

CNN is tracking US coronavirus cases here:

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Tracking Covid-19 cases in the US

The World Health Organization "must be supported," the UN Secretary General said in a statement Tuesday evening, after US President Donald Trump cut funding to the organization.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Tuesday that the state will have access to 1 million N95 masks.

He said Florida's Emergency Management Department will also be delivering 1.2 million​procedure masks, 100,000 face shields, 500,000 gloves, 60,000 containers of hand sanitizer, and 35,000 gowns.

In total, DeSantis said the state will have distributed:

US President Donald Trump's trade adviser Peter Navarro appeared on Fox News after the White House briefing to defend the President’s WHO funding halt and discuss how it could impact US-China relations.

Pressed on how this could impact future trade negotiations with China, he called those “interesting questions” but went on to talk about supply chains.

Asked again later in the interview how coronavirus will impact the US-China relationship, Navarro said, “We have to find out where it originated. We have to understand why China did not tell us for six weeks in which we lost precious time preparing for a pandemic.”

“This is something we will not forget: China was basically vacuuming up the world’s PPE around the world so that we didn’t have it in New York and people didn’t have it in Milan," he said. "That’s a question that has to be answered. The question going forward is will they provide the PPE to the world as we go through this crisis without strings?”

Honolulu will require people to wear facial coverings when visiting essential businesses from Monday. 

Mayor Kirk Caldwell said the new requirement applies to businesses like grocery stores. People will not be required to have a commercially-produced mask, he said.

The mayor said the order does not apply to people working in offices that are not open to the public, although facial coverings are still recommended at those businesses. People also must cover their faces when riding public transportation.

To avoid confusion, Caldwell said there is one major exception to the rule: no one should wear a mask in a bank.

The largest professional association of physicians in the US, the American Medical Association, labeled President Donald Trump’s announcement that he will put a hold on funding for the World Health Organization as “dangerous.”

AMA President Dr. Patrice A. Harris issued a statement today in response to Trump's announcement.

Here's a portion of her statement:

What we know: During a White House news briefing today, Trump announced he will halting funding while a review is conducted.

The surgery chair of a New York City hospital says more patients are departing than arriving.

Dr. Craig Smith of the New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center also said the number of patients in the Intensive Care Unit and on ventilators appears to be leveling off at two hospitals that are bearing the brunt of those cases.

Smith wrote these details in a daily note to faculty and staff.

There are also fewer autopsies: Smith said autopsies have become uncommon in most settings, and notes “phone consent is not considered acceptable”

He added: "Because phone consent is not considered acceptable -- a significant hurdle when visitors are not allowed. We are pursuing solutions to that unintended consequence of an administrative policy that was less often objectionable pre-pandemic.”

US President Donald Trump announced Tuesday he is halting funding to the World Health Organization while a review is conducted.

Trump said at a news conference the review would cover the WHO’s “role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of coronavirus.”

The President said that while the US imposed travel restrictions on China during the early stages of the outbreak, the WHO was "opposed to what we did."

Trump continued: "The decision of other major countries to keep travel open was one of the great tragedies and missed opportunities from the early days."