Coronavirus pandemic in the US

North Carolina has not yet meet the threshold to begin reopening the state, Gov. Roy Cooper said at a news conference. 

Cooper said a task force will lay out guidelines this week on the state’s goals to reopen. The state, he said, has not seen a 14-day decline in cases, as recommended in the White House’s guidance for reopening.

The state also has not meet the threshold in contract tracing and testing, Cooper said.

North Carolina's stay-at-home order is set to expire on April 29. Cooper said there will be an announcement later this week regarding the order.

At least 710 crew members from the USS Theodore Roosevelt have tested positive for Covid-19 as of Tuesday, according to the US Navy.

Nine sailors have been hospitalized for coronavirus.

The Navy said 94% of the crew has been tested. At least 3,872 crew members tested negative for the disease. 

Some background: The US Navy and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have launched an investigation into the coronavirus outbreak aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier. The inquiry will look to establish the origin of the outbreak and understand how it spread rapidly on board the ship.

To carry out the investigation, crew members are being asked on a voluntary basis to complete a survey and provide two new specimens — blood and nasal swabs — for laboratory testing, according to the Navy. It hopes to get 1,000 volunteers which is what it believes is needed for representative sampling.

Since March 1, when coronavirus was first detected in Florida, hotel revenues are down by $1.6 billion dollars, compared to the same time last year.

The data comes from a new resource page on the Visit Florida website that breaks down the impacts of the virus on the state’s tourism industry. The launching of the page was announced during Gov. Ron DeSantis’ task force meeting to reopen the state. 

Airlines are also down: Florida’s domestic airline capacity is down 65.8% for the period of April 20 to May 19, as compared to the same period in 2019, the website said. International airline capacity during the same period is down 78.4% as compared to the previous year.

According to Visit Florida's new data, there has been a spike in visits to the “Current Travel Safety Information” page. The spike, according to Visit Florida, is an indicator people are actively seeking information on how to safely travel to the state.

Visit Florida is not a government agency, but a not-for-profit corporation made up of public and private partnership, according to the group’s website.

There are at least 804,194 cases of coronavirus in the US, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

Today, Johns Hopkins has reported 17,226 new cases in the United States. 

The US surpassed 700,000 cases on Friday, according to Johns Hopkins’ tally.

Air Canada will suspend flights to the United States starting Sunday until May 22. 

The airline made the decision “as a result of the agreement between the governments of Canada and the United States to extend border restrictions by an additional 30 days," according to a statement on Tuesday. 

The airline said it is is waiving change fees for affected customers with bookings during this period.

Since March 16, Air Canada has reduced its schedule by more than 90% as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the airline said.

Coronavirus patients taking hydroxychloroquine, a treatment touted by President Trump, were no less likely to need mechanical ventilation and had higher deaths rates compared to those who did not take the drug, according to a study of hundreds of patients at United States Veterans Health Administration medical centers.

In the study of 368 patients, 97 patients who took hydroxychloroquine had a 27.8% death rate. The 158 patients who did not take the drug had an 11.4% death rate.  

Researchers also looked at whether taking hydroxychloroquine or a combination of hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin, had an effect on whether a patient needed to go on a ventilator.  They found there was no difference between these groups and the patients who took neither drug.  

 “In this study, we found no evidence that use of hydroxychloroquine, either with or without azithromycin, reduced the risk of mechanical ventilation in patients hospitalized with Covid-19,” the authors wrote.  

Remember: The study, which reviewed the veterans’ medical charts, was posted Tuesday on medrxiv.org, a pre-print server –– meaning it was not peer reviewed or published in a medical journal. 

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the University of Virginia.

The $310 billion in new funding for the Small Business Administration's Paycheck Protection Program is only projected to last few days as businesses rush in for funds, according to a banking industry source.

“Two-10 days, but our guess is on the lower end of that timeline,” the source said.

Today, congressional negotiations reached a deal on a bill that includes hundreds of billions of dollars in new funding for small businesses hurt by the coronavirus outbreak, three sources familiar tell CNN.

The text of the bill should be unveiled as soon as Tuesday afternoon as the two sides give the deal a final read.

Lawmakers will try to pass the bill in the Senate at 4 p.m. ET when the chamber convenes for a pro forma session.

Republican leaders are pushing back on an effort to change the House rules to allow for remote voting by proxy ahead of an expected vote on the matter Thursday.

In the letter, he also raised questions about the 2020 House calendar and how committee business will be conducted going forward.

His comments come as Republican members are increasingly opposed to implementing proxy voting, which would allow members who are unable or unwilling to travel during the coronavirus pandemic to instruct another member how to vote on their behalf.

House Democratic leaders have said they want to pass the rules change on a bipartisan basis, but as they are in the majority they could pass it without Republican support. 

The language of the rules change has not been finalized yet, but it would be temporary and used only for emergencies like the pandemic, according to House Rules Chair Jim McGovern. 

Wisconsin's Department of Health Services said that they now have at least seven cases of Covid-19 tied to the state's in-person election on April 7, a spokesperson confirmed to CNN.

"We are confirming 7 cases as of yesterday," the department's spokesperson Shawn Benjamin said in a statement.

In an effort to investigate the impact of the election on the state's coronavirus cases, the department added “election activity” to its list of investigation questions in the disease registry, the statement said.

"Please note that we only have 30% of the data back from new cases as of 4/7 and on," Benjamin said.

"We hope to have these fields complete by Friday and will provide a more complete report then," he added.