By Jessie Yeung, Adam Renton and Rob Picheta, CNN
The United States has reported at least 868,395 cases of the novel coronavirus, including 49,861 related deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
At least 25,090 new cases and 3,071 deaths have been reported so far on Thursday.
The totals include cases from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other US territories, as well as repatriated cases and those in the US military.
CNN is tracking US coronavirus cases here:
From CNN's Helen Regan, Priyali Sur and Vedika Sud
Hafiz Mohammed Naseerudin says that after a police officer assaulted him for being a Muslim and blamed him for spreading the coronavirus, he was left lying on the road for almost an hour.
Naseerudin, 44, had gone to pick up some vegetables from his friend's house in Humnabad, in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, when he says an officer stopped him on his scooter.
Other vehicles were on the road, Naseerudin says -- he believes he was stopped because of his religion.
"I am an imam, so I look and dress very Muslim. I also have a long beard," he says. "The cop started hitting me and saying that it is because of me and my community that this disease is spreading."
Nagesh D L, police superintendent of Bidar district where Humnabad is located, says the officer has been suspended while an inquiry was conducted into the incident. Naseerudin says he called the police from hospital to make a statement, but Nagesh claims they did not receive any complaint.
Naseerudin is not alone: As fears over the coronavirus mount in India, some Muslims, who make up roughly 200 million of the country's 1.3 billion population, have been targeted in Islamophobic attacks and accused of spreading the virus.
In the capital New Delhi, volunteers distributing ration kits to Muslim families say they face harassment from police and are scared to go out. In Punjab, Muslim milk producers say they have been threatened by villagers, their houses have been raided by police, and people are scared to buy their produce.
While these incidents have been mostly isolated, the virus fears are only amplifying existing prejudices, playing into growing Hindu nationalism which in recent years has seen India's Muslim societies increasingly marginalized.
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From CNN's Kristina Sgueglia
Mayor Bill de Blasio said that May will be a "decisive" month for New York City, adding, "I feel very good about things getting substantially back to normal by September."
De Blasio said that "somewhere between, you know, the end of May and the beginning of school is going to be a point where we start to loosen up," speaking on a radio program Thursday.
The mayor said the reopening process will be done in slow, careful stages.
De Blasio rehashed the city’s "aggressive" plan to get testing done by hopefully the hundreds of thousands, and reiterated that the federal government needs to help the city in terms of testing resources.
The testing sites the city set up in minority communities are seeing a good response, he said, adding that new sites he previously announced will come online soon, including those in New York City Housing Authority communities.
De Blasio also added that the "status quo before Covid-19 is not acceptable to me," addressing the racial disparity he says has been exposed by the virus.
From CNN's Jen Christensen
The world is "weeks to months" away from knowing what drugs will work to fight Covid-19, said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the technical lead for the World Health Organization's coronavirus response.
The WHO is tracking a number of studies that are trying to determine exactly how many people have been infected around the world, Van Kerkhove said.
According to one study in Germany, the number of people who have antibodies that show they've had the coronavirus infection ranges from 2% or 3% up to 14% of the population, she said during CNN's coronavirus town hall earlier tonight.
"What’s interesting about this is that these numbers, this seroprevalence, is a lot lower than some of the earlier models had predicted that would have suggested that this virus was circulating a lot more, and that much more of the population was already infected." Van Kerkhove said. "So these studies right now are not actually showing us that."
Seroprevalence is the number of people in a population who test positive for a disease.
The WHO is also closely monitoring the hundreds of Covid-19 drug trials.
"Everyone in the world wants to know which drugs, which medications are going to work, which medications are going to save lives," Van Kerkhove said. "Unfortunately, right now, we don't have any evidence one works, yet."
It’s critical that the studies are done and done well, Van Kerkhove said.
"So we can get to the answer that everybody needs," she said. The results, she added, "can't come soon enough." But the world is "weeks to months" from knowing what works.
From CNN's Ben Westcott
The first city in the world to go into lockdown due to the coronavirus is slowly returning to something that might be described as normal, after months of fear and anxiety.
But the scars of the viral outbreak which for 76 days shut down the Chinese city of Wuhan, and much of the surrounding Hubei province, lie just beneath the surface, with many citizens worried about a second outbreak and businesses still struggling to get back on their feet.
CNN international correspondent David Culver, now in Wuhan, joined CNN's global town hall earlier Thursday to talk about the city's reopening.
"You will notice, looking at the windows here, many of those stores are still closed. They still have these steel garage door-like gates down ... There is concern from the customer side of things that they can walk into a store without facing any potential exposure," he said.
Fewer than half of the stores he saw had reopened, and major brands that have resumed business did so with some modifications, Culver said. The stores have moved products to the front, and changed their procedures, to reduce interactions between customers and staff and keep stores as uncrowded as possible.
Read more here about Wuhan's reopening:
From Ana Maria Cañizares and Flora Charner
The number of coronavirus cases reported in Ecuador nearly doubled Thursday, from 11,183 to 22,160, according to the country’s health minister.
The sharp increase was not caused by a new outbreak, health minister Juan Carlos Zevallos said during a news conference on Thursday. Zevallos said it was due to a backlog of tests in the country's laboratories, which left thousands of tests unprocessed.
Ecuador is one of the countries that has been hit hardest by coronavirus in Latin America. The country has the second highest number of cases behind Brazil, where more than 49,000 cases have been confirmed, including 3,313 deaths.
From CNN's Clare Foran, Manu Raju and Haley Byrd
The US House of Representatives voted on Thursday to approve a roughly $480 billion package to deliver aid to small businesses and hospitals and expand Covid-19 testing -- the latest attempt by lawmakers to blunt the devastating impact of the pandemic.
The vote was 388-5 and passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.
The measure passed the Senate earlier this week and will now go to US President Donald Trump, who has expressed support for the legislation and indicated that he will sign it.
Where the money is expected to go: $310 billion will go to the Paycheck Protection Program, which was set up to help small businesses struggling from the economic deep freeze triggered by coronavirus.
Funding for the program ran dry earlier this month, prompting an outcry from the business community.
Some $75 billion will go to hospitals and health care providers to address coronavirus expenses and lost revenue, and $25 billion to facilitate and expand Covid-19 testing.
The increased funding for testing comes at a time when there is widespread recognition that testing capacity must increase and improve as states consider when to reopen businesses and lift lockdowns.
Referred to as an "interim" measure by lawmakers, the legislation is the latest historic effort by Washington to prop up the economy on the heels of a more than $2 trillion rescue package along with other relief measures already approved by Congress.
From CNN’s Anneken Tappe
For the fifth week in a row, millions of American workers applied for unemployment benefits, seeking financial relief as businesses remained closed during the coronavirus pandemic.
First-time claims for unemployment benefits totaled 4.4 million in the week ending April 18, after factoring in seasonal adjustments, said the US Department of Labor.
In total, 26.5 million people have filed first-time claims since mid-March as the coronavirus pandemic is forcing businesses to close and lay off workers.
Numbers at that level reflect a devastating blow to workers, indicating roughly 16.2% of the US labor force is suffering from layoffs, furloughs or reduced hours during the coronavirus pandemic.
Early studies have shown lower-income workers are particularly affected by job losses, and minorities, specifically black and Hispanic families, are expected to bear the brunt of the economic cost of this crisis.
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