April 8 coronavirus news

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said, “It’s going to be a bad week for deaths.”

Speaking on Fox News, Fauci said in New York there is a decrease in hospitalizations, admissions to intensive care and intubations, but warned the increase of deaths is “sobering.” 

Fauci added, “Driving that and ahead of that is that fact that we are going to start to see the beginning of a turnaround, so we need to keep pushing on the mitigation strategies, because there is no doubt that’s having a positive impact on the dynamics of the outbreak.”

“As we get further on, beyond this week, we should start to see a turnaround which is a good sign,” he added. 

The Dow rose 330 points at the open after giving up all of a 900-point rally yesterday.

An absence of economic data has continued to make the stock market extremely volatile.

Despite yesterday's topsy-turvy session, the S&P 500 still has a chance today at entering a bull run. But it'll remain unclear for quite some time if the bear market is over.

Here's what happened at today's opening:

You can follow live updates on the market here.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the next two to three weeks will be defining for the course of the coronavirus pandemic in the country.

"We carefully study the experience of all countries that also faced the coronavirus threat, and that experience says the first four to five weeks into the epidemic are the most difficult,” Putin said in a televised government meeting today.

He added:

Russia has officially reported more than 8,600 cases and more than 60 deaths so far, according to country’s health authorities.

Twitter is struggling to combat misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, a new study from Oxford finds.

Researchers tracked 225 pieces of misinformation rated false or misleading by fact-checkers and found a majority, 59%, of those false claims had not been removed by Twitter – that’s despite pledges from the company to tackle potentially dangerous misinformation about the virus. 

Facebook and YouTube fare better with only 24% of the false claims still on Facebook and 27% on YouTube.

Responding to Oxford’s findings, Katie Rosborough, a Twitter spokesperson told CNN, “We’re prioritizing the removal of content when it has a call to action that could potentially cause harm. As we've said previously, we will not take enforcement action on every Tweet that contains incomplete or disputed information about Covid-19. Since introducing these new policies on March 18, we’ve removed more than 1,100 Tweets and challenged 1.5 million potentially spammy accounts targeting Covid-19 discussions.”

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy again stressed the importance of staying at home during the coronavirus pandemic, after he slammed “jackasses” this week who aren’t practicing proper social distancing.

Murphy told residents to avoid holding family gatherings during Passover and Easter. 

Murphy said the $2 trillion CARES Act is a start for the unemployed, but the state needs cash to allay the effects of the pandemic. 

“God knows, we need the Feds to come in in a big way,” he said. “We’re going to need another big slug of money to make sure we can stay above water and continue to serve the folks who need us most.” 

Murphy said the state doesn’t have enough beds and equipment right now, but is sourcing supplies from around the world and has opened a 500-bed field hospital.

Watch more:

There are 286 sailors aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt who have tested positive for Covid-19, a US defense official tells CNN.  

More than 90% of the crew have now been tested. 

There are 2,329 sailors who have been moved ashore. However, that is still behind the April 3 target of 2,700.

World trade is expected to fall by between 13% and 32% in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic disrupts normal economic activity and life around the world, the World Trade Organization said in its annual trade report and outlook.

WTO economists believe the decline will likely exceed the trade slump brought on by the global financial crisis of 2008. 

Trade volume had already dropped by 0.1% in 2019 as a result of tariffs and a slowing economic growth. 

The organization said that nearly all regions will suffer double-digit declines in trade volumes in 2020, with exports from North America and Asia hit hardest, warning that trade will likely fall steeper in sectors with complex value chains, particularly electronics and automotive products.

WTO added trade volume could recover in 2021 but uncertainty remains as it will depend largely on the duration of the outbreak and the effectiveness of the policy responses.

"The unavoidable declines in trade and output will have painful consequences for households and businesses, on top of the human suffering caused by the disease itself. These numbers are ugly – there is no getting around that. But a rapid, vigorous rebound is possible. Decisions taken now will determine the future shape of the recovery and global growth prospects,” WTO Director-General Roberto Azevêdo said as he urged countries to work together.

Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said officials are looking at areas in the United States where mitigation efforts seem to be working to determine if the social distancing guidelines currently in place could be relaxed at the end of April.

"We're doing a series of clear investigations of what happened in Washington and L.A. and what does that mean and how you keep the number of cases down," Birx said today during an appearance on ABC's "Good Morning America.”

Birx also said officials expect to roll out an antibody test in the next 10 to 14 days "so we can really tell how many Americans were asymptomatic and infected." 

"This makes a big difference in really understanding who can go back to work and how they can go back to work, so all of those pieces need to come together over the next couple of weeks," Birx told ABC's George Stephanopoulos. 

A 27-year-old Maryland grocery store clerk with cerebral palsy died of the coronavirus in her mother’s arms. 

“I was able to hold my baby's hands for the last time … It was my baby. It’s like a hole in my heart, like a hole in my heart because all she wanted to do was just help people. She just wanted to help,” Leilani Jordan’s mother, Zenobia Shepherd, said. 

Her mother said Leilani helped older people load groceries into their carts and into cars, but she wasn’t given any masks or hand sanitizer. 

“Management, leadership needed to kick in and help make sure those that are vulnerable, seniors, other people, have the help and assistance that they need so they're not put into situations to where they can lose their lives. You can't see Covid virus. You can't see Covid-19. You don't know where it's at. You don't know when it's going to hit,” Shepherd said.

“We got to take this serious. It is no time to cut back on the supplies and the resources. We need more to help. Grocery stores are where everybody goes,” she added.

Once Leilani was admitted to the hospital, her mother said the drug hydroxychloroquine was administered to her, but it didn’t help. 

Leilani’s stepfather said that before she died, she recorded a video on her phone saying goodbye to her family and friends. They found it once they got back from the hospital. 

Her mother said Leilani was selfless, never judged anyone and was nicknamed “Butterfly.” “I’ll always miss my baby. Forever. Forever. Forever,” Shepherd said.