April 9 coronavirus news

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert has issued an executive order requiring everyone traveling into the state to register their travel plans with the state. 

The order applies to all adults starting Friday morning, whether they arrive by air or by ground. 

In a press release, the governor’s office says all visitors will get instructions on how to register via an automatic text message when they arrive in the state. 

The state says they will share only general information they collect on travel, with no personally identifiable information released publicly.

Universal Orlando Resort and Universal Studios Hollywood in Florida will remain closed at least through May 31 due to the coronavirus pandemic, the company said Thursday.

The company also address employee compensation during the closure.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards announced Thursday he approved the first grant from the governor’s Covid-19 Response Fund, which will help a nonprofit organization feed children through the summer across South Louisiana. 

The fund issued a $100,000 grant to the Three O’Clock Project, which expanded its meal distribution services after some public school systems shuttered their cafeterias.

Massachusetts has seen 140,000 new unemployment claims filed over the last week, Gov. Charlie Baker said in a press conference on Thursday.

In total, 470,000 new claims have been filed over the last three weeks, the governor said. For reference, in a typical month roughly 7,000 to 10,000 claims are filed, he said.

Baker announced on Thursday that a new hospital site will open at the Boston Convention Center on Friday which will have a total of 1,000 beds; 500 will be used for medical and 500 for the homeless/unsheltered population.

The medical beds will be dedicated to those who were in the hospital and are now recovering, but need a lower level of care. The site will be called Boston Hope.

Massachusetts has also received 100 more ventilators from the federal stockpile and five have been donated from Boston Children’s Hospital, Baker said.

Some context: In his briefing on Wednesday, Baker cited a report from the Pioneer Institute that said as many as 25% of the state’s working population could be unemployed by June. 

The state of Louisiana “doesn’t currently know” the race of the individuals testing positive for coronavirus, Gov. John Bel Edwards said Thursday.

The governor told reporters in Baton Rouge that there is more reliance on the private labs for testing in order to help the state’s capacity to test but "reporting is uneven" in terms of timing.

Commercial labs represent about 90 percent of the overall testing in Louisiana, according to Edwards.

The state cannot compare the percentage of the ethnicity of people who test positive for Covid-19 with the percentage of the ethnicity of people who die from the virus, the governor explained.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Russia have reached a tentative agreement Thursday evening to cut oil production by 10 million barrels a day for May and June, a senior OPEC source told CNN.

The deal would see the output cut easing to 8 million barrels a day from July to December followed by 6 million barrels a day from January 2021 to April 2022. ​

Non-OPEC member Mexico, however, is expressing reservations about the length of the agreement​, according to the source. 

Iran, Libya and Venezuela would be exempted from the output cuts due to sanctions or lost production.

Oil prices gave up earlier gains to trade lower with expectations that the 23 producers of the OPEC+ alliance would cut up to 15 million barrels a day.

Some context: Today’s emergency OPEC virtual meeting follows pressure by President Trump who last week called on Saudi Arabia and Russia to deliver big productions cuts. The meeting has still not finished.

G20 Energy Ministers are expected to meet tomorrow at 8 a.m. ET “to foster global dialogue and cooperation to ensure stable energy markets and enable a stronger global economy.”

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell asked residents to continue to follow the stay at home mandate as the city continues its fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

Cantrell urged residents to not “break the rules” and stay home during Easter weekend.

Dr. Jennifer Avegno, director of New Orleans Health Department, said the city is working with local healthcare institutions to set up mobile testing to help communities impacted the most by severe illness and death. 

“We are nowhere near the end of this crisis,” Avegno said. “Hospitalizations and deaths are still on the rise, and we expect them to increase for some time.”

New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) issued a memo Thursday extending the time a body will be kept in their custody to 14 days.

The memo was obtained by CNN from Mike Lanotte, the director of the NY State Funeral Directors Association, and confirmed by OCME.

Funeral director Patrick Kearns, upon hearing the news, told CNN, "I’m very relieved, because now we don’t have the idea that people are going to be sent to mass burials and the psychological stress that puts on families.” 

Kearns called the news, “a workable timeframe for us."

Some context: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Thursday he will be signing an executive order to bring additional funeral directors into the state to help with the high number of deaths.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said the state is taking a close look at how to prevent the spread of coronavirus in their prison population after an inmate revolt at one facility Wednesday. 

The Department of Corrections said the disturbance at the Monroe Correctional Complex – which involved more than 100 inmates – was prompted by concern after six minimum security prisoners tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

Inslee said they are concerned with balancing “the needs of incarcerated individuals with public safety.”