April 8 coronavirus news

New York City has 5,603 new coronavirus cases and 716 new deaths, according to the city website.

The city now has a total of 80,204 coronavirus cases and 4,260 deaths.

President Donald Trump says it will be safe to reopen the country when "we can say we have to be on that down side of that slope."

"We can do it in phases, go to some areas where — you know, some areas are much less affected than others," he said at a Wednesday coronavirus task force briefing. "But it would be nice to be able to open with a big bang and open up our country, or certainly most of our country."

CNN reported earlier Wednesday that discussions are underway at the task force level about how to reopen the US economy.

Trump said he believes the US is "ahead of schedule" in efforts to slow the spread of coronavirus.

"You hate to say it too loudly because all of a sudden things don't happen. But I think we will be sooner rather than later," Trump said.

"But we'll be sitting down with the professionals. We'll be sitting down with many different people making a determination," he went on. "And those meetings will start taking place fairly soon."

Watch:

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says a "handful" of State Department officials around the world have tested positive for Covid-19, but the vast majority of US facilities are open. 

Pompeo said that only one US embassy has closed due to coronavirus.

He later added that three local hires, "not US direct hires, but local people who were working for the State Department in embassies around the world," have died of coronavirus. 

When asked Wednesday if China has withheld information on the coronavirus, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that now is “not the time for retribution” and instead stressed transparency of data from China and other countries.

China, he added, has been cooperating in many areas that the US is “deeply appreciative” of, but he did not get into additional details.

Pompeo refrained from bashing China during the Wednesday White House briefing, changing his tune from earlier in the coronavirus pandemic.

“This is not the time for retribution but it is still the time for clarity and transparency,” Pompeo said. "Every country, China included, needs to share data.”

The Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday announced a second major purchase of ventilators, buying more than 43,000 ventilators from the manufacturer Philips for $646.7 million.

The ventilators will go into the national stockpile, which gets distributed across the country, in chunks. Philips will make a first delivery by the end of May of 2,500 ventilators, the Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement. The company will deliver a total of 43,000 ventilators by the end of the year.

The major purchase comes hours after the department announced a similar contract for the auto company General Motors to make ventilators.

The contract with Philips, a company that was already a major presence in building ventilators, comes under the Trump administration's announcement to use the Defense Production Act to get more needed supplies to aid the fight against the coronavirus epidemic.

HHS said it will award five other companies contracts under the DPA.

Frans van Houten, CEO of Royal Philips, issued a statement, saying Philips is "actively collaborating with the U.S. government to help save lives in the U.S. and across the globe.” 

“There is an unprecedented global demand for medical equipment to help diagnose and treat patients with COVID-19," van Houten said. "We welcome the support of the U.S. government in our efforts to aggressively increase the production of hospital ventilators. We believe in fair allocation of scarce medical equipment to those who need it the most, and we are ramping up to deliver 43,000 units to the most critical regions in the U.S. in the coming weeks and months through December 2020.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the State Department has repatriated over 50,000 citizens from around the globe since January 29 amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Pompeo said the State Department is working with “foreign governments, militaries, airport authorities, medical units, transportation companies, hotels, you name it ” to make sure Americans get back to their families.

Pompeo said that there are still US citizens in places across the world, and that the State Department will continue to work on getting people back to the United States until people can travel on their own again. 

“We still have several thousand people that we’re working, they identify themselves every day and new people find themselves in difficult place. Look, we’re gonna be done when people can travel on their own again,” Pompeo said. “We are gonna keep it up as long as we have resources to do it and there is a need.”

Only 21.6% of hotel rooms in the United States were occupied last week, according to new data from hospitality analytics company STR. 

That’s down slightly from the week before and down more than 68% from the same week last year.  

Only 7% of the rooms in Oahu Island, Hawaii, are occupied, the lowest rate for any market in the country and down more than 90% from the same week last year. 

Across the board, economy hotels and lodging in suburban areas tended to have more people staying than other hotels, according to STR. 

New York City posted about 18% occupancy last week, which was a slight increase from the just over 15% posted for two weeks ago. 

African Americans in Mississippi account for 56% of coronavirus cases and 72% of deaths, state epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers said Wednesday.

“We’re seeing some significant disparities, some racial disparities both in the percentage of cases we’re seeing and deaths," he said. "We’re seeing now 56% of our reported cases so far are in African Americans."

He added: "72% of the deaths we’ve reported are in African Americans and when you break down those deaths, when you look at them, we’re seeing significant incidents of diseases like diabetes, heart disease, lung disease, liver disease, those chronic underlying problems that we know exist in Mississippi already."

Illinois' Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike on Wednesday announced the state is reporting 1,529 new Covid-19 cases, including 82 deaths, over the last 24 hours. 

"These are our highest numbers to date," Ezike said in a press conference.

Illinois has a total of 15,078 coronavirus cases, with 462 deaths in the state.