April 10 coronavirus news

The state of Illinois on Friday reported 1,465 more cases of Covid-19 and 68 additional deaths.

The statewide total is now 17,887 cases with 596 deaths, according to Dr. Ngozi Ezike, the Illinois Public Health director.

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio said the bodies being buried on Hart Island are not just coronavirus victims. Rather, the mass grave is used for any unclaimed bodies — people who have died from any number of diseases and conditions.

"These are people who no one after a period of time has claimed them and not just Covid victims, but victims of all diseases all reasons for fatality and they are being buried," de Blasio said.

He added that if a family member ever shows up, " the body would be given to the family"

De Blasio was asked about Hart Island after tweeting about it earlier today: 

 Moments ago, President Trump also mentioned the mass grave at Hart Island.

"New York has experienced something that has been absolutely horrific. I saw Hart Island yesterday, I saw those people being buried yesterday," Trump said at a news conference.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he plans to issue an executive order next week with guidelines on reopening businesses in the state. 

“We will focus on protecting lives, while protecting livelihoods. We can do both,” Abbott said at a news conference in Austin today.

Asked whether testing would be increased in the state in order to open up the economy, Abbott said, “Testing will be a component of it. We want to open up, but we want to open up safely.” He said more detail would be announced next week.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Friday there have been 11,449 positive coronavirus cases across the state and 221 fatalities.

As of Friday afternoon, about 116,000 people have been tested for Covid-19 in Texas, and there have been 1,532 hospitalizations, Abbott announced at a press conference. 

The governor said 1,366 people recovered from Covid-19, having been symptom-free for a 14 day period after contracting the virus, a statistic the state has begun tracking as well.

Conversations around reopening the economy are ramping up. Behind the scenes, many Republican governors are expressing concern on how they will navigate a scenario in which President Trump reopens the economy before their states are ready, according to multiple sources in and around these discussions.

Modeling suggests a slew of red states will not hit their worst points until later this month, making reopening the economy in those areas by early May nearly impossible.

Most Republican governors have sought to align with Trump during this outbreak, and a demand from the White House to reopen the economy would complicate that mission. If there appears to be viable movement towards reopening too early — the administration will face some pushback from their allies. 

According to one source familiar with the conversation among GOP governors, the hope overall right now is that “this is all Trump talk” and that cooler heads — such as his well-known coronavirus advisers Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx — will prevail. 

Some background: Trump's aides have begun intensive discussions on a plan to reopen the US economy as soon as the start of May, according to people familiar with the deliberations.

This morning on CNN's New Day, Fauci was asked if he thought social distancing guidelines should be relaxed by May 1, and responded "the virus kind of decides whether or not it's going to be appropriate to open or not." 

Fauci added that prior to re-opening the country, he would like to see a "clear indication" that reported cases are going down. 

"One thing you don't want to do is you don't want to get out there prematurely and then wind up — you're back in the same situation," Fauci told CNN adding, "we're looking for the kinds of things that would indicate that we can go forward in a gradual way to essentially reopen the country to a more normal way." 

In Friday’s White House briefing, Trump said he listens to everything that both Drs. Fauci and Birx say. 

President Trump suggested Friday during the White House briefing that insurance companies should pay out business interruption claims related to the coronavirus, even if coverage for a pandemic is not explicitly included in their policy.

Trump added: "You have people that have never asked for business interruption insurance (payouts) and they’ve been paying a lot of money for a lot of years for the privilege of having it. And then when they finally need it, the insurance company says ‘we’re not going to give it.’ We can’t let that happen."

The President also said that his administration has already suggested to credit card companies that they should reduce their fees.

Watch:

At least 18,002 people have died in the US from coronavirus, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University.

There are at least 486,490 cases of coronavirus in the US, according to Johns Hopkins.

So far on Friday, Johns Hopkins has reported 20,740 new cases and 1,318 reported deaths. 

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.

Dr. Anthony Fauci said there “is no doubt you're going to see cases” when some of the current social distancing restrictions are relaxed.

Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said when restrictions are lifted and cases emerge, “that's where you want your resources to be able to very efficiently in real-time identify, isolate, and contact trace.”

President Trump said that while he is hoping to reopen the country by a certain date, he won’t do anything until he knows the country will be healthy. He added that he doesn’t want to have the country “go back” and then have to implement restrictions again. 

“We are looking at a date. We hope we are going to be able to fulfill a certain date, but we are not doing anything until we know that this country is going to be healthy. We don't want to go back and start doing it over again, even though it would be in a smaller scale,” Trump said. 

Massachusetts had its single biggest day for confirmed Covid-19 cases on Thursday with 2,151 new cases reported, Gov. Charlie Baker said on Friday.

The state conducted “well over” 7,000 coronavirus tests on Thursday, the governor added.

The percent of people testing positive for the virus has increased over the past few weeks, the governor said. It reached a new high on Monday of 30%, and has remained in that range throughout the week. On Thursday, 29% of the tests were positive.

There were 70 new fatalities in the commonwealth on Thursday. Overall, the governor said, Massachusetts has roughly a 2.7% case fatality rate.

Following the guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as other states, Massachusetts Department of Public Health is issuing an advisory recommending people wear a mask or cover their face in public.