States reopen in US as coronavirus pandemic persists

US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said it is “too hard to tell” whether international travel will resume this year.

During an appearance on Fox business this morning, he said, "Too hard to tell at this point, Maria. I hope down the road, it is."

Mnuchin also repeated an update the Administration made Sunday on Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funding, saying that $175 billion of the $310 billion has been used. In this round of funding, 2.2 million loans have been processed, the average size $79,000.

“We really see this is going directly to small businesses,” he said – after criticism during the last round that the loans went to some larger businesses. He noted that the last round of funding processed 1.7 million loans.

“There were some hiccups with the systems,” he conceded, but “now the systems are up and running,” predicting 60 million people will be impacted by this round.

Mnuchin was pressed on whether there might be flexibility for businesses regarding PPP loans. He said it was “not designed as a loan, it was really designed as a grant” and pointed small businesses toward other loan programs available to help with overhead costs. 

He was pressed again on this with the examples of restaurants, most of which will not be able to reopen under statewide guidelines at full capacity to generate the revenue to rehire their staffs and forgive their loans within the time frame specified by the PPP legislation.

“This is the way the program was designed by Congress… I don’t have the flexibility to change that,” he said.

President Trump, Mnuchin said, is “sympathetic to the restaurant industry.”

It's Monday morning in the US. Here's what you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic to start your week:

It took a global pandemic for the Supreme Court, an institution rooted in tradition and precedent, to change how it conducts its business. 

In lieu of the pomp and circumstance associated with the highest court in the land, where lawyers are still presented with quill pens, television cameras are not allowed and only those lucky enough to get inside the building can hear the proceedings live, on Monday morning the justices will conduct their business over a simple fiber optic cable. 

To some, teleconferences are the new normal as the world grapples with social distancing, but for the justices and arguing counsel, the change will impact how the court digests its cases and how the lawyers prepare.

"I never thought the day would come when high on my list of pre-argument worries was how to keep my dog from interrupting," veteran lawyer Lisa Blatt, who will argue the first case, told CNN. 

On top of that, the justices will also break another tradition: They will let the public listen in real time. Numerous outlets, including CNN.com, will broadcast the proceedings live.

The experiment will begin Monday morning at 10:00 a.m., and play out for six argument sessions over two weeks. The court will work out the kinks in a couple of under-the-radar cases to start, but will build toward some of the biggest cases of the term -- including the duel over President Donald Trump's financial and tax records.

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'Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!' The Supreme Court is live on the air

Los Angeles-based photographer Erin Sullivan has found an unconventional way to satiate her penchant for exploration while under a stay-at-home order because of the coronavirus pandemic. 

Sullivan let her creativity go wild in her latest photo series, "Our Great Indoors." In it, she constructs fantastical landscapes from common household objects found in her apartment, such as pancakes, pillow cases and raincoats. 

Sullivan's career as a travel photographer has brought her to some of the most beautiful places around the world. These excursions helped her prepare for more than 40 days in self-quarantine.

So far, she's made an ice cave out of sheets and pillows, a paper bag canyon, a broccoli forest and a jello lake.

Read more about Sullivan's projects.

In his final moments, Ananda Mooliya reassured his wife and two sons that he was fine, though they could hear his labored breathing from the next room, over the sound of the TV.

His wife, Rajni Attavar, made soup for him. Mooliya struggled out of bed. With the help of eldest son, Amith, the 56-year-old subway station agent made his way to a kitchen chair in their Corona, Queens, home. Sweat beaded on his face. His mouth was open.

"I wiped his face," Attavar recalled through tears. "Then I called out his name. He didn't respond."

She sprinkled water on his head. Amith checked his father's weakening pulse. His younger son, Akshay Mooliya, 16, called 911. EMTs arrived and, for about 10 minutes, aided his breathing with a respiratory device.

They then covered him with a white blanket on the kitchen floor.

It was April 8 at 9:37 p.m., according to his death certificate. Immediate cause of death was listed as "Recent Influenza-Like Illness (Possible COVID-19)." Several hours would pass before his body was lifted off the floor and taken to a morgue -- and nearly three weeks before his cremation, family members said.

The handling of Mooliya's body isn't unusual in these times.

The coronavirus death toll has overwhelmed health care workers, morgues, funeral homes, crematories and cemeteries. Body bags pile up across the city that became epicenter of the pandemic.

Read more: 'So many more deaths than we could have ever imagined.' This is how America's largest city deals with its dead

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.