By Mike Hayes, Meg Wagner and Zamira Rahim, CNN
From CNN’s Anneken Tappe
Nearly 3 million people filed claims for unemployment benefits in the week ended May 9.
Altogether, more than 36.5 million Americans have sought initial unemployment aid since mid-March.
Continued claims rose to 22.8 million for the week ended May 2, a slight increase from the prior week.
Watch:
From CNN’s Brian Fung
Amazon said Thursday it will begin mass-producing hundreds of thousands of protective face shields for medical workers and, eventually, the general public.
The gear allows for plastic shields to snap onto a 3D-printed headpiece. More than 10,000 have been donated to health workers so far, with another 20,000 on the way, Amazon said in a statement.
The face shields are based on a collaboration with 3D printing hobbyists from Washington State, and the design has been approved by the National Institutes of Health, Amazon said.
The effort reflects how Amazon has sought to bring its massive logistics and supply chain operations to help fight the pandemic. The company has also previously said it is developing coronavirus testing capacity.
But Amazon has also faced probing questions from policymakers about its safety policies for its own front-line warehouse and delivery employees.
As capacity ramps up, Amazon said, it expects to list the face shields at cost.
“We are confident we will be able to list them at a significantly lower price – almost a third of the cost – than all other reusable face shields currently available to frontline workers,” wrote Brad Porter, an Amazon executive, in the statement.
From CNN's Betsy Klein
President Donald Trump has addressed concerns from Dr. Anthony Fauci that coronavirus spikes could turn into outbreaks as the country begins to open.
In an interview with Fox Business, Trump said he “totally” disagreed with the nation's top infectious disease specialist on reopening schools, claiming young people “are very little affected by this,” despite the facts that some young people have become very sick and that can spread the virus to other, more vulnerable people.
"I think that we have to open our schools, young people are very little affected by this. We have to get the schools open, we have to get our country open, we have to open our country. Now we want to do it safely, but we also want to do it as quickly as possible. We can’t keep going on like this, you’re having bedlam already in the streets, we can’t do this, we have to get it open,” he told Fox Business.
Trump claimed that the US could put out the “embers” of additional coronavirus cases.
“You know we’ve learned a lot. We didn’t know anything about it, this is a horrible disease… and we also know how to put it out but we have to open our country, we have no choice," he said.
The President said that he thinks critics want him to keep the country closed: “Yeah, I do, I think it’s a political thing.”
From CNN's Betsy Klein
President Donald Trump suggested the US is mobilizing its military for widespread coronavirus vaccination distribution once there is a vaccine, in an interview with Fox Business.
“I just literally left a meeting. We’re mobilizing our military and other forces, but we’re mobilizing our military on the basis that we do have a vaccine," he said, adding: "You know, it’s a massive job to give this vaccine. Our military is now being mobilized so at the end of the year, we’re going to be able to give it to a lot of people very, very rapidly,” he said.
Trump continued: “Assuming you get it (a vaccine), then you have to distribute it. And unless you’re mobilized and ready you’re not going to be able to do it for a long time. So we’re starting now.”
He said the US is working on the assumption that a vaccine will be ready by the end of the year and that the country would prioritize giving it to vulnerable populations at the outset.
“We have to be able to give it, to use it on most of our population. Now we’ll focus on elderly, we’re going to focus on nursing home and senior citizen centers,” he said.
Analysis by CNN's Stephen Collinson
President Donald Trump's repudiation of Dr. Anthony Fauci has long been probable. Once the trusted doctor warned of the human cost of Trump's push to quickly reopen the country, it became inevitable.
Trump broke with Fauci, who has served under six presidents, on Wednesday over the infectious disease expert's warnings that getting businesses and schools back open too quickly would lead to unnecessary suffering and death.
"I was surprised by his answer, actually," Trump said. "It's just -- to me it's not an acceptable answer, especially when it comes to schools."
The delicate dynamic between Fauci and Trump has been watched for months. Its latest fraying marks the most pronounced clash yet in the tussle between science and politics that has long plagued the administration's fight against the coronavirus.
Fauci's transgression is to base his evaluations -- after decades of public service and expertise fighting HIV/AIDS, Ebola, Zika and anthrax -- on facts and logic that conflict with Trump's chosen version of reality.
Fauci has long said that only the virus can decide when normal life -- things such as NFL games and schools reopening, for instance -- will be safe again.
Read more here.
From CNN's Joe Sutton
At least 84,136 people have died in the US from coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University's latest tally. The organization said 1,390,764 cases had been recorded across the country.
The totals include cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as repatriated cases.
CNN is tracking Covid-19's spread across the US here.
From CNN's Kevin Liptak, Jim Acosta and Kaitlan Collins
Moncef Slaoui, the ex-head of GlaxoSmithKline's vaccines division, has been tapped to lead President Donald Trump's "warp speed" effort to develop a coronavirus vaccine, two White House officials said Wednesday.
The officials said four-star Army General Gustave Perna had also been selected to help oversee "Operation Warp Speed." Slaoui will act as the chief adviser and Perna will serve as the chief operating officer overseeing logistics.
The appointments come two weeks after Trump announced the operation to quickly ramp up production and organize distribution plans for a forthcoming vaccine, which experts say is still months or years away.
The effort had been overseen by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and their agencies will remain involved in the effort, officials said.
A number of people were considered over the past week for the vaccine chief position in addition to Slaoui, one official said, including Elias Zerhouni, the former head of National Institutes of Health under President George W. Bush and Art Levinson, the CEO of Calico.
From CNN's Devan Cole and Caroline Kelly
The Trump administration official set to testify before Congress Thursday oversaw the production and purchase of vaccines before being abruptly dismissed last month amid a clash with the administration on coronavirus treatments.
Dr. Rick Bright is an international expert on vaccines with a lengthy work history in the field. His expected testimony comes after he filed a whistleblower complaint last week alleging he was removed from his post in retaliation for opposing the broad use of hydroxychloroquine, a drug frequently touted by President Donald Trump as a treatment for Covid-19.
Bright had led the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, part of a Department of Health and Human Services office that has been central to the response to the coronavirus outbreak, since 2016.
As BARDA's director, Bright oversaw "the advanced development and procurement of medical countermeasures against an array of threats to national security and the public's health, including chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear threats and pandemic influenza, and emerging infectious diseases," according to an archived webpage of his official biography.
An HHS spokesperson told CNN at the time of his departure in April that Bright would be leading a public-private partnership on vaccine development and treatment. But Bright has yet to assume that new role after he filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that his early warnings about the coronavirus were ignored.
Read more here.