April 13 coronavirus news

President Trump said the White House will announce tomorrow the creation of a committee — or multiple committees — focused on reopening the country in the weeks ahead.

“We’ve also as you’ve probably heard, developed a committee. We’re actually calling it a number of committees with the most prominent people in the country, the most successful people in the various fields, and we’ll be announcing them tomorrow,” Trump said at the coronavirus task force briefing. 

The President said his team is debating the blueprint for opening parts of the country, something he said he expects to happen “quickly.” 

CNN has reported that White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is expected to chair the economic working group and that Ivanka Trump is expected to play a role in it as well.

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During Monday’s coronavirus task force press briefing, the White House screened a campaign-style montage of clips attempting to positively frame President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

The video featured commentators saying early in the virus’ spread that the coronavirus wasn’t as big as the flu and governors thanking the President and the task force. It also outlined a timeline of the President taking “decisive action” during the pandemic, “even as partisans sniped and criticized.”

At one point in the video, an audio clip from New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman played. Haberman is heard saying the President’s move to issue China travel restrictions was “probably effective.”

Haberman was one of the authors of a lengthy Times report detailing “Trump’s failure” on the coronavirus.

As the clip of Haberman’s voice played, the President could be seen looking at reporters, smiling and pointing to the screen. 

After the screening, Trump said, “It’s very sad when people write false stories … mostly from the New York Times.”

Haberman’s quote was part of an appearance on the New York Times podcast The Daily. The quote from Haberman omits a final sentence, in which Haberman concludes that though the measure was probably effective, “The problem is, it was one of the last things that he did for several weeks.”

“I mean, if you had libel laws, they would have been out of business,” he continued, later saying that the Times story was “a fake.”

Asked how the video was produced, Trump said, “That was done by a group in the office.”

“They were just pieced together over the last two hours,” he continued, saying that there were likely “over a hundred more clips” available.

The President also confirmed that the campaign-style video was put together by White House staff — federal government employees.

“This was done by (White House Social Media Director) Dan (Scavino) and a group of people just put it together in a period of probably less than two hours,” he said.

Asked why he felt the need to put the video together, Trump said, “Because we’re getting fake news and I’d like to have it corrected.”

CNN's Em Steck contributed to this report.

Every new patient at three hospital campuses in Seattle is now being tested for coronavirus as they are admitted. 

The policy started today and was announced by University of Washington Medicine — which operates Harborview Medical Center, University of Washington Medical Center-Montlake and University of Washington Medical Center-Northwest. Previously, Covid-19 tests were only administered to patients experiencing known coronavirus symptoms.

The facilities said most of the tests can now be examined on-site by UW Medicine, with results the same day.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the coronavirus outbreak in Russia is worsening, warning Monday that the number of seriously ill patients is on the rise. 

“We are seeing that the situation is changing every single day and regrettably not for the better. The number of sick people is increasing along with the number of serious cases,” Putin told officials during a televised conference on Monday. 

Speaking to Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova, Healthcare Minister Mikhail Murashko and Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin, Putin highlighted that the viral outbreak in other parts of Russia is projected to be behind Moscow by approximately three to four weeks. He called on local officials not to waste time. 

“This means that they still have time. But this time can disappear very quickly; it must not be wasted but used in the most effective way possible,” Putin urged. 

“The next few weeks will largely determine the situation, and this is why all our actions, including preventive measures on site and the organization of the entire healthcare system should be most rational and taken on the safe side with due account of all factors,” he continued. 

According to the John Hopkins University, at least 18,328 cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in Russia, while at least 148 deaths have so far been recorded.  

Florida Surgeon General Scott Rivkees said social distancing would be the new normal until a vaccine is developed.

Despite both Rivkees and DeSantis saying at the governor’s briefing that the state is experiencing a plateau, Jared Moskowitz, the state’s director of emergency management, noted that the current models forecast the peak will occur on April 26. 

“The model has changed on Florida three times,” Moskowitz said. “It was May 4, then the 21st of April and now it’s the 26th of April. We continue to watch the model as new data is gathered and we will continue to prepare accordingly.”

There are at least 577,307 cases of coronavirus in the United States and at least 23,219 people have died, according to Johns Hopkins University's tally of cases.

So far on Monday, Johns Hopkins has reported 20,0007 new cases and 1,140 reported deaths. 

The totals include cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as all repatriated cases. 

President Trump said he is not going to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, a key member of his administration's coronavirus task force, despite retweeting a call to fire Fauci this morning.

At his daily coronavirus press briefing, a reporter asked Trump if he noticed the #FireFauci hashtag when he retweeted the post. The President acknowledged he saw it and responded "I retweeted somebody" and then added "that is somebody's opinion."

The President said that him and Fauci are on the same page saying, "we have been from the beginning."

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Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is a key member of the Trump administration's coronavirus task force, told reporters he didn't mean to suggest anything during his interview with CNN's Jake Tapper that President Trump was at fault for not intervening in the coronavirus pandemic sooner in the year.

When asked by a reporter on receiving "pushback" from Trump about the recommendation to mitigate, Fauci responded he didn't mean to use that word to describe it.

"That was a wrong choice of words. When people discuss, they say this will maybe have a harmful effect on this or that, it was a poor choice of word," he said.

Fauci was referencing comments he made Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union" where he suggested the United States should have responded earlier in the year to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

"I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives," Fauci said on "State of the Union" when asked if social distancing and stay-at-home measures could have prevented deaths had they been put in place in February, instead of mid-March.

"Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But what goes into those decisions is complicated," added Fauci. "But you're right, I mean, obviously, if we had right from the very beginning shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then."

Trump's initial handling of the crisis has come under increasing scrutiny as it's been revealed that administration and health officials were sounding alarms for weeks before Trump took decisive actions such as calling for social distancing measures.

Trump has disputed his administration was slow to respond and has called for the economy to be reopened quickly, potentially by the beginning of May, despite health officials' warnings that doing so could risk a resurgence.

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A Kansas health official says the state’s first outbreak tied to a religious gathering resulted in four deaths and 46 positive cases.  

Dr. Lee Norman, the secretary for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, said at a news conference today the outbreak started in Wyandotte County and has since spread into nine other counties.

Norman says his agency is monitoring 23 outbreaks in Kansas — five of those are tied to religious gatherings, 12 are in long-term care facilities, three have been tied to big businesses, one to a correctional facility and two have been tied to group living arrangements.  

Some context: Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly issued an order before Easter Sunday that temporarily banned mass gatherings of 10 or more people meant to limit religious gatherings.