By Meg Wagner, Elise Hammond, Mike Hayes and Emma Reynolds, CNN
From CNN’s Rosa Flores and Sara Weisfeldt
Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez announced the county’s first Covid-19 walk-up testing site today.
The new testing site is located at Holy Family Catholic Church in North Miami.
Walk-up testing sites are geared toward providing testing opportunities to underserved communities and people who do not own cars.
While this is the first walk-up testing site in Miami-Dade County, similar sites have been set up in other parts of the state in the past few weeks.
From CNN's Rob Frehse
New York City has had at least 11,708 confirmed coronavirus deaths and 5,228 probable coronavirus deaths, according to the city website.
The total number of confirmed coronavirus deaths and probable coronavirus deaths in New York City is 16,936.
The New York City Health Department defines probable deaths as people who did not have a positive Covid-19 laboratory test, but their death certificate lists as the cause of death “COVID-19” or an equivalent.
There have been 156,100 coronavirus cases in the city, and about 40,000 people have been hospitalized, according to the city.
From CNN's Kate Sullivan, Annie Grayer, and Liz Stark
The New York State Board of Elections voted to cancel the presidential primary scheduled for June 23 during a call with the board on Monday.
Douglas Kellner, the co-chair of the New York State Board of Elections, told CNN the two Democratic election commissioners — himself and Andrew Spano — have the power under the election law to cancel the election.
“In the budget that was passed by the legislature and signed by the governor on April 3 included a provision that any candidates who have suspended their campaign or requested to be removed from the ballot should be removed from the primary ballot,” Kellner said. “And of course Sen. Sanders had suspended his campaign. He did that five days after the law was enacted. And it basically rendered the primary moot, and at a time when the goal is to avoid unnecessary social contact, our conclusion was that there was no purpose in holding a beauty contest primary that would marginally increase the risk to both voters and poll workers.”
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order last month moving the primary from its originally scheduled date of April 28 to June.
He responded to the board’s vote in his news conference today, saying, “I’m not going to second guess the board of elections there are a number of, I know there are a lot of election employees, employees of boards of elections who are nervous about conducting elections. But I’ll leave it up to the board of elections.”
Jay Jacobs, chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee, told CNN in a phone interview Monday afternoon that he agreed with the decision to cancel the state's presidential primary contest.
Jacobs said it was a "necessary move" by the New York election officials to protect the health and safety of voters and poll workers.
He noted that the outcome was essentially “pre-determined” since Sen. Bernie Sanders dropped out of the Democratic race and emphasized the need to protect voters amid the coronavirus pandemic.
"We've stopped all non-essential business. This certainly is a non-essential primary if ever there was one," Jacobs said.
From CNN’s Lindsay Benson
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned at a news conference Monday that it "is going to be slow and steady wins the race" as the state moves forward during the pandemic.
"It's not going to be something that a switch is going to be flipped, this is going to be slow and steady wins the race, it's going to be very methodical, very data driven, and there's going to be probably some people that think it's too slow, and I get that," DeSantis said.
DeSantis said there are about 400 coronavirus patients on ventilators in the state.
"In the state of Florida right now, we have 6,408 ventilators that are just simply sitting idle. In fact, the total number of patients we have on ventilators for Covid-19 statewide is about 400, as of last night," DeSantis said.
From CNN's Stella Chan
Los Angles County will open a decontamination center to disinfect N95 masks, LA County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said at a press conference this morning.
He said the shortage in the supply chain, as well as the growing market for counterfeit masks is a concern.
The new center will be able to decontaminate more than 30,000 masks per day, and allow each mask to be used up to 20 times, said Sheriff Villanueva.
An airtight container, the size of a small dishwasher, will decontaminate masks using hydrogen peroxide vaporization. Within a few hours, the masks will be cleaned without compromising any protective properties.
The LASD is the first in the nation to implement this type of a center, said the sheriff.
Officials will be conducting scaling tests this week. It is not clear when the decontamination center will be completely operational.
From CNN's Mohammed Tawfeeq and Jen Deaton
The number of coronavirus cases have now topped 3 million globally, according to a running tally from Johns Hopkins University. Nearly a third of all cases are in the US.
The US has at least 972,969 confirmed cases, according to Johns Hopkins
Spain follows the US with the second highest count of Covid-19 cases worldwide with 229,422.
Spain is followed by Italy, France, Germany and the UK as countries with the most coronavirus cases globally.
From CNN’s Konstantin Toropin
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds announced today that 77 of the state's 99 counties can reopen restaurants, fitness centers, retail stores and enclosed malls at 50% capacity beginning May 1.
Reynolds also said that she is lifting the ban on religious gatherings of more than 10 people.
This approach takes "a targeted approach to loosening restrictions" and focuses on counties "where there is no virus activity or where virus activity has been consistently low and shown a downward trend," Reynolds said.
Counties where Covid-19 activity is higher will have their closures extended through May 15, the governor said.
"It's based on a stabilization and it's based on virus activity and the amount of new cases over the past 14 days," Reynolds said.
She added that business and churches approved for reopening "must also adhere to social distancing, hygiene, public health measures, and business guidelines from the department of public health" to reduce the spread of Covid-19.
Reynolds also said that restaurants will have to keep tables at least six feet apart and limit the number of people that can be at a table.
From CNN's Shawn Nottingham
An additional $130 million in funding will be allocated to Massachusetts' nursing homes and long-term care facilities to implement coronavirus precautions, Gov. Charlie Baker said.
The money will be used for additional staff, personal protective equipment and cleaning and disinfecting of the facilities, he said.
“Clearly protecting our most vulnerable citizens in nursing homes, rest homes and assisted living residence has emerged as one of the greatest challenges we face in our fight against Covid-19," he said.
Baker also announced that all residents and staff in the commonwealth’s nursing homes and long-term care facilities will now be tested for coronavirus as part of new mandatory criteria.
Baker also said additional guidelines including procedures for infection control and mandates on personal protective equipment in facilities will be implemented. The facilities will be audited to make sure they are meeting the requirements, Baker said.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said while it’s too early to tell whether reopening will be on a regional or statewide basis, he prefers the latter.
“My bias will be leaning toward making state decisions — statewide decisions," he said, adding “unless we see a real unique reason to do otherwise, or unless we see a really bifurcated reality in terms of the virus and its impact on the state.”
The reopening will begin in work places and venues where the state has a “high degree of confidence” that social distancing and other related norms can be effectively executed.
While Murphy did not have a clear picture of what would come back online first, he mentioned the “food chain” and other essential elements. He added that as much as he loves music, concerts are not going to be coming back “anytime soon.”
Murphy noted that some decisions will likely be made in harmony with other states, giving the example that he does not imagine that a restaurant in Jersey City, New Jersey, would have a different protocol than one on the lower west side of Manhattan.