April 8 coronavirus news

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. 

A New York City hospital had issues with its oxygen supply Tuesday night causing the urgent transfer of multiple patients to be cared for elsewhere, Gen. Terrence O’Shaughessy told CNN. 

“They needed to transfer those patients immediately as quick as possible because their lives were dependent on it,” said O’Shaugnessy, the commander of US Northern Command overseeing the military response.

A team of 37 military doctors, nurses and technicians in full personal protective equipment moved 18 patients in an ambulance to different facilities for urgent care. 

Ten patients were moved to the USNS Comfort, five to Sinai, two to Bellevue and one to North Bronx, the general said. 

O’Shaughessy said the military is there to be used in such an emergency at area hospitals.

“It was challenging, they were all in various significant states of acute medical needs,” he said. “When they got to (the) Comfort, several of them were crashing so they had to provide that immediate medical assistance ... As they were pulling up to the Comfort they were crashing so the doctors from the Comfort had to respond in the ambulance and then get them stabilized and then bring them into the Comfort.”

A source with knowledge of the operations at multiple hospitals said the New York City area hospital had “major problems with excess ice accumulation on their overburdened medical oxygen systems.”

According to Johns Hopkins University's tally, there are at least 423,135 cases of coronavirus in the US and at least 14,390 people have died from the disease.

So far on Wednesday, Johns Hopkins has reported 24,326 cases and 1,495 reported deaths in the US.

The totals includes cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other U.S. territories, as well as all repatriated cases. Wyoming is the only state or territory that is not reporting a death from coronavirus.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in an interview with NPR Wednesday that the chamber would not have unanimous support to approve the Senate’s version of a measure to add $251 billion in funding to a small business loans program established by the $2.2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package last month.

Democrats have called for additional funding for hospitals, state and local governments, and food stamps to be passed alongside the small business loans funding. 

“The White House says they don’t support that, but we do,” Pelosi said.

Asked about President Donald Trump’s removal of the inspector general who had been tasked to oversee the implementation of the CARES Act, Pelosi said what Trump is doing “is so very, very wrong.”

“We cannot allow this to happen without a bright light shining on it,” she said of rolling out the aid package.

Pelosi said the committee on the coronavirus crisis that Democrats plan to launch later this month will seek to prevent waste, fraud, abuse, profiteering and price-gouging. 

“This is not an offense to the President. It's about how big money attracts some kind of profiteering and price gouging and the rest,” she added of the committee’s purpose.

The nation’s top infectious disease expert told a reporter that the handshake, a customary American greeting, could become a thing of the past as the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread throughout the United States.

Asked about the country getting back to normal, Dr. Anthony Fauci told Sinclair Broadcast Group’s political reporter Scott Thuman that “it depends on what you mean by 'normal.' ”

The US Food and Drug Administration has sent a letter to a firm marketing a product that falsely claims to “cure, mitigate, treat, prevent, or diagnose Coronavirus and/or Covid-19 in people,” according to a press release from the agency.

The letter was sent to Genesis II Church of Health and Healing and multiple websites associated with the firm. It targeted the “Miracle Mineral Solution” -- a chlorine dioxide product -- which was marketed as prevention and treatment for coronavirus.

The FDA has issued previous warnings that chlorine dioxide poses a significant risk to health and is not shown to be safe and effective for any health use.

The recipient of the warning letter has 48 hours to provide documentation that misleading claims have been corrected, along with outlining what steps are being taken to prevent future recurrences. Failure to do so “may result in legal action, including, without limitation, seizure and injunction,” according to the letter sent Wednesday. 

CNN has reached out to Genesis II Church of Health and Healing for comment.