April 5 coronavirus news

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice is expanding an executive order he issued Friday limiting gatherings to no more than five people to include three more counties. 

Monongalia, Harrison and Kanawha counties are now included in an order which originally included Berkeley, Jefferson and Morgan counties, Justice said in a press release.

These are the restrictions, according to the governor:

A coronavirus vaccine and other treatments to fight the virus are being tested, according to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

He said doctors in New York are working with the Food and Drug Administration. Some of the treatments that are being tested are the use of plasma, antibody treatment and the use of hydroxychloroquine.

Cuomo also said they are testing a rapid testing programs which could play a part in protecting vulnerable populations and getting people back to work.

Watch:

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease specialist, says the US does not have the coronavirus under control, “to say we have it under control, Margaret, would be a false statement. We are struggling to get it under control.” 

Fauci warned Americans in an interview on CBS with Margaret Brennan, that “it is going to be a bad week” ahead as there is an escalation in cases, but that “within a week or a little bit more” we should see the curve begin to flatten.

He again underscored the importance of social distancing measures, and said that mitigation is working.

Fauci said that it was crucial for the coronavirus to get “globally under control,” or it could become seasonal. He also said that efforts for a vaccine and the beginning of clinical trials will hopefully mean the US is more prepared if there is a resurgence of the virus.

This morning Fauci said in the next week or two the US will have a much greater capacity to perform the types of testing needed before society can return to normal, though they are not “100% there yet.”

Some context: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its guidelines, recommending that Americans wear some sort of face protection when out in public.

When if Fauci wears a mask, he said that if he goes into a situation where he cannot control whether or not he is 6ft away from people, that he would and does wear a mask. He said the mask is an “adjunct to help protect you and protect others.”

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the health care system is facing operational challenges due to hospitals being over capacity.

He said hospitals are being asked to manage the same amount of staff and resources.

"That is putting a tremendous amount of stress on the health care system," Cuomo said. "You're asking a system to do more than it has ever done before, more than it was designed to do with less."

He said the way to get through it is to use a surge and flex the system to balance the patient load between private and public hospitals in the area.

Watch:

Some Pentagon workers began receiving emails from their office administrators over the weekend to come to work Monday with at least one face covering, according to an official who received one of the messages.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper said during an interview Sunday that such a directive for Defense Department staff and troops would likely be coming very soon following recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday.

The number of deaths over the past few days has been dropping “for the first time," New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said today during a press conference.

The significance of that is “too early to tell” he added.

Cuomo added that ICU admissions are also down, daily intubations are down “slightly” and the hospital discharge rate is “way up” and that’s “great news.”

He said there is a "shift to Long Island" adding "upstate New York is basically flat… as Long Island grows the percentage of cases in NYC has reduced."

The total number of intubations are down across the state, Cuomo said.

As of April 4, there were about 316 people intubated in the hospital, that number is down from 351 reported the day before.

Watch:

New York has a total of 122,031 cases of Covid-19 across the state, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said at a press conference Sunday.

There are now 4,159 people who have died in the state which is up from 3,565 the day before, Cuomo said.

There were 575 new hospitalizations across the state, the governor said.

Of those hospitalized for Covid-19, 74% have been discharged, Cuomo said.

A renown economist is warning about the consequences of opening the economy back up too quickly after the coronavirus.

Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist and winner of Nobel Prize for Economics in 2008, told CNN that it is better for businesses to stay shut down longer rather than starting prematurely and pointed to the flu pandemic in 1918.

Krugman said opening the economy too fast would cause more deaths and a bigger economic slump.

"We need to provide disaster relief. We need to provide aid to people who are not getting incomes, and that makes it tolerable," Krugman said. "We need go on as long as it takes."

The US surgeon general said this week is going to be the "hardest and the saddest" for "most Americans' lives," describing the upcoming grim period of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States as a "Pearl Harbor moment" and a "9/11 moment."

Officials are warning the next two weeks will be crucial in the fight to stop the spread of the virus. Early Sunday, the nationwide death toll had surpassed 8,500 people, with more than 312,000 infected, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Some context: While speaking at Saturday's coronavirus task force briefing at the White House, President Trump said that this week and next will probably be the toughest in the fight against coronavirus and that "there will be a lot of death."

"This will be probably the toughest week between this week and next week, and there will be a lot of death, unfortunately, but a lot less death than if this wasn't done but there will be death," Trump said.