States reopen in US as coronavirus pandemic persists

Drug giant Roche says it has received FDA emergency use authorization for a new coronavirus antibody test, which it claims is more accurate than most of those on the market.

Antibody tests look for evidence that someone has been infected with a virus, usually in the past. They can be used to see how many people in the population have been infected, even if they did not show symptoms. They may also begin to show if people develop any kind of immunity to coronavirus, either in the short term or the long term.

Antibody tests are different from the tests used to detect current infections, which look for evidence of the virus itself in a patient.

The US Food and Drug Administration has not yet confirmed that it has given Emergency Use Authorization to the Roche test.

Experts urge caution: Public health experts have complained that most of the antibody tests now on the market are inaccurate. Even a test that claims to have 95% accuracy can miss up to half of cases if the virus is not very common in the population being tested.

Roche said its test catches 99.8% of people who have been infected, and identifies 100% of those who have not -- a sensitivity of 99.8% and a specificity of 100%.

Better specificity averts the risk of false positives -- a test that wrongly tells someone they have been infected when they have not been.

If people do develop immunity to coronavirus infections, false positives would be dangerous because they could give people a false sense of security.

Roche tested the assay in people who had been diagnosed with Covid-19 14 days previously using a diagnostic test called a PCR test.

Roche says it has already started shipping the new antibody tests to leading laboratories globally, and will ramp up production capacity to high double-digit millions per month to serve healthcare systems in the US and other countries that accept US approval.

Read more on antibody tests here.

J.Crew Group, which operates the J.Crew and Madewell brands, has become the first national US retailer to file for bankruptcy protection since the coronavirus pandemic forced a wave of store closures.

The clothing retailer said Monday it had filed to begin Chapter 11 proceedings in federal bankruptcy court in the Eastern District of Virginia. The company also said it had reached a deal with its lenders to convert about $1.65 billion of debt into equity.

The retailer expects to stay in business and emerge from bankruptcy as a profitable company. Madewell, the fast-growing denim brand that had been slated for an IPO, will remain part of the business.

"We will continue all day-to-day operations," J.Crew Group CEO Jan Singer said in a statement.

Despite meat processing plants across the US shutting down due to coronavirus concerns, for now, you can still find plenty of meat in the grocery stores.

One thing you can't find on the shelves is flour. Stores are cleaned out and it's not currently available on most websites. But why is that?

Carey Underwood, who is director of mission-driven partnerships and programs at King Arthur Flour, said it's because people have been baking a lot.

Underwood said the shortage in grocery stores is because of the spike in demand for flour, not because there is a shortage of wheat.

"The demand for all signature flours, but especially all-purpose and bread flours, is simply unprecedented and is outpacing the inventory in our warehouses," she said.

Underwood added: "The wheat is available, but it must be milled, bagged, and transported to warehouses. These steps simply take time and the flour is selling out again as quickly as it reaches shelves."

Read more.

The streets of New York -- and many major cities across the US -- are hauntingly empty as the pandemic leaves most of the country on lockdown. 

This chilling sign of the times brings to mind a big question: After the pandemic passes, will some people choose to leave big-city life behind? 

That trend was already starting to emerge in parts of the country, even before coronavirus hit. Now the pandemic is changing the way we talk about city life. And some experts say it could change who opts to live in them.

"It's hard to think about living in New York when we don't have our existence and our careers there," says Ashley Arcement, a dancer, singer and actor who headed to a friend's house in Florida with her boyfriend, a pianist, after Broadway shut down in March. 

With Broadway closed, restaurants open only for takeout and many working from home -- if they still have a job -- the city that never sleeps is looking downright dormant. 

But that wasn't the case a few months ago, when coronavirus started to spread through America's largest and densest city. New York quickly became the epicenter of the country's coronavirus outbreak, spurring stay-at-home orders from officials to keep contagion at bay. 

While the number of new cases in New York has started decreasing, the death toll continues to climb. More than 12,000 coronavirus deaths have been confirmed in the city. 

"Why New York? Why are we seeing this level of infection? Well, why cities across the country?" said New York Governor Andrew Cuomo at a news briefing last month. 

On the other side of the country, Joel Kotkin says the situation is notably different. 

In am opinion piece published in the Los Angeles Times, Kotkin credited that city's sprawling development with slowing the spread of coronavirus.

The executive director of the Houston-based Urban Reform Institute, Kotkin says that cities were already in trouble. And in the age of social distancing, he says, dense cities particularly have a lot going against them.

Read more.

The novel coronavirus has infected more than 3.5 million people worldwide and killed at least 247,000. If you're just joining us, here are the latest developments:

After admitting US coronavirus deaths could hit 90,000, President Donald Trump is bemoaning his own plight -- complaining that he has been treated worse by the press than Abraham Lincoln.

Trump's comments, at the memorial in Washington to a president assassinated after emancipating the slaves during the Civil War, are likely to further polarize the raging politics of a current crisis that is stretching national unity.

Trump was speaking at the time of a widening divide between states that are opening economies and others that are warning of premature declarations of victory amid soaring tensions fomented by weeks of coronavirus lockdowns.

His statement was classic Trump, not just in his audacity of comparing himself to the man many historians rate as the greatest president, but in his tendency to make every issue -- even in the midst of a national tragedy in which tens of thousands of Americans have died -- about himself.

Read the full analysis: Lincoln got better press treatment, Trump claims, as he ups pandemic death estimate

Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said on Fox this weekend that having a coronavirus vaccine by January is possible “on paper” but will require the proper execution.

Birx was asked whether it was realistic to have a vaccine by the start of next year, given other estimates that it will take at least 12 to 18 months to develop.

“The way that it’s possible is if you bring forward five or six different classes of candidates, which the Operation Warp Speed has done,” Birx said. “And so it’s not relying on a single vaccine platform. It’s relying on several different candidates that are made differently and act differently.”

The vaccine would also require speeding up clinical trials, she said.

CNN previously reported that the goal is to make 100 million doses of a vaccine available by November, 200 million doses by December and 300 million doses by January, according to a senior administration official.

On remdesivir: Birx described the investigational drug remdesivir as a “first step forward."

In early results from a trial sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, the drug was found to shorten the duration of illness in severely affected patients, but it had no statistically significant effect on mortality.

Birx said we’ve only seen “half the data,” but she said an independent monitoring board thought the improvement was significant enough to start giving remdesivir to patients who were previously receiving a placebo.

“So it’s a first step forward. In parallel, we have a whole series of therapeutics including plasma, and also monoclonal antibodies being worked through,” she said, referring to lab-made antibodies targeting the virus.