April 18 coronavirus news

With today's announcement in Florida, 31 states and the District of Columbia have either ordered or recommended that schools remained closed through the end of the academic year, according to CNN reporting.

26 states and Washington, DC, have announced school closures through the end of the academic year:

Five states are recommending to close schools through the end of the academic year:

Vincent Asaro, a reputed mob boss and member of the Bonanno crime family, was granted compassionate release from a federal medical detention facility in Missouri over fear of the continued spread of Covid-19.

In a decision issued on Friday in the Eastern District of New York, Judge Allyne Ross ruled that Asaro's "age, in combination with his deteriorating health," constituted "an extraordinary and compelling reason for his release" during the pandemic.

Ross wrote that, while there were no confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the prison where Asaro is being held, "absent more information about how much testing the BOP (Federal Bureau of Prisons) is conducting, it is possible that undetected cases are present in the facility."

Asaro pleaded guilty in 2017 to charges stemming from a 2012 incident in which he was alleged to have ordered a man's car set on fire. He was sentenced to eight years in prison.

He suffered a stroke in custody in 2019, suffers from aphasia, and has difficulty walking, court documents state.

Asaro was found not guilty in 2015 on charges that he participated in the infamous 1978 Lufthansa Heist at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

The city of Boston will begin deploying public works trucks equipped with sound equipment to broadcast messages about Covid-19, including reminders to wash hands, stay home, cover your face, and maintain social distance, according to a news release from Boston Mayor Marty Walsh’s office.

The messages will be broadcast in seven languages, depending on the community, and will be deployed to the neighborhoods that have Covid-19 rates higher than the rest of Boston, the release states.

The trucks will be deployed beginning on Sunday at noon, the release states.

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said he’s issued an executive order to create a task force to develop industry-specific plans for the proposed phased reopening of the state's economy beginning May 4.

Hutchinson says the task force will develop plans that will allow businesses some degree of operation, but maintain public health requirements.

The group will be chaired by businessman Steuart Walton and the governor said he hopes for faith-based organizations to take part as well. 

The task force is slated to meet start up next week, but Hutchinson said guidance from public health experts will ultimately determine what re-openings can be put into effect and whether the May 4 date is feasible for activity.

The governor acknowledged that not all restrictions will be lifted and until there’s a vaccine, social distancing is a part of life in the future.

President Donald Trump said the government will be providing assistance to 13,000 community health sites and mobile medical stations that will give testing in medically under-served regions with “many African American and Hispanic communities.”

President Trump says that they are doing "big studies" on the racial disparities of the coronavirus, noting that "we don’t like it" and it's "not right."

The President said the job the community health sites do "is incredible."

"These centers provide care to 28 million people living in medically underserved urban and rural regions including many African American and Hispanic communities," he said. "We're taking care of them and it's so important because you've all been reading about the disproportionate numbers on African American and you're reading a little bit less about Hispanic but likewise Hispanic communities. The numbers are disproportionate."

Almost 23% of high school students in New York City public schools on average did not interact with remote learning between April 6 and April 14, according to the city’s Department of Education data.

Each school has specific ways of defining interaction with remote learning, the NYC DOE said in a statement. These may include student submission or completion of an assignment, student participation in online forums, and student contact with teachers through phone or email, among other criteria, the DOE said. 

By these definitions, an average of 77.1% of NYC high school students (grades 9-12) interacted with remote learning between April 6-14, DOE data showed.

Overall, an average of about 16% of New York City public schools students from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade did not have these interactions during this time period, the data show. 

Schools started tracking student interaction with remote learning on April 6 through an online system called the Student Interaction Tracker on STARS Classroom that schools are familiar with, Barbot said. Through this system, schools can mark which students have not interacted on a particular day. About 84.3% of all students, on average, did interact with their schools under the defined criteria from April 6 to April 14, the data show.

The DOE has collected and is reporting data from an average of 81% of students every day, but data in the process of being uploaded is not included in the latest April 6 through April 14 figures, the department noted in their statement. Data on school interactions will be made available weekly, the DOE said.

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson says the state may begin to report the number of positive coronavirus cases at Cummins Unit prison separately from the overall state number, as cases are increasing testing at the prison.

There are currently 230 inmates with coronavirus, said Dr. Jennifer Dillaha, the medical director for immunizations at the state's health department. None of the prison's staff members have tested positive yet, she said.

The number of new coronavirus cases in North Dakota have increased significantly several days in a row, Gov. Doug Burgum said during a press conference on Saturday.

Burgum said new case counts have nearly doubled the past few days. There were 28 new cases reported Thursday, 46 new cases reported Friday and 90 new cases reported Saturday, he said.

The state has 528 positive cases and nine deaths, according to Burgum.

A total of 183 people have recovered and 13 people are currently hospitalized, Burgam said. At least 47 people have been hospitalized in the state, according to the North Dakota Health Department website.

Hospitals are prepared to handle the increased number of patients, Burgum said.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that K-12 schools will continue with distance learning for the duration of the school year, saying "it’s not the ideal situation" at a press conference Saturday afternoon.

"We've got pretty good momentum for distance learning, it's obviously not the ideal situation, but given where we are in the school year, we felt that that was the best, best decision to go forward," DeSantis said.