May 3 coronavirus news

New York City will produce its own Covid-19 test kits, Mayor Bill de Blasio said today.

The city will be working with Print Parks, a local partner, that will help create swabs for the testing kits, the mayor said.

The city is on track to produce 50,000 3D-printed swabs per week, with an initial 30,000 expected by the end of this week, de Blasio said.

The testing kits are broken down into three parts, swabs, transport medium and screw tube tops, the mayor said.

Viral Transport Medium (VTM) will get the tests to hospitals as soon as possible, he said.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said he is concerned about reopening the economy and relaxing social distancing measures, saying it is still very early in the outbreak.

Massachusetts is “between the first and the fifth” inning in its fight against coronavirus, and that “we’re still very much in the beginning days of coronavirus," Walsh said.

Walsh criticized the Trump administration’s response to the outbreak, saying “the mixed messaging is confusing.”

He responded to pictures of crowds on the national mall in Washington, DC, and New York's Central Park, saying, “whether it's Central Park or the Mall is the wrong message. We're still very much in the beginning days of coronavirus.”

Walsh said cities across the US still need mass testing and personal protective equipment for frontline workers.

"As we move down the road here, if there's a second surge, all of the equipment that they have now, they'll need more stuff. I think that's what the federal government should be focused on,” Walsh said.

Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said on Fox this morning that having a coronavirus vaccine by January is possible “on paper” but will require the proper execution.

Birx was asked whether it was realistic to have a vaccine by the start of next year, given other estimates that it will take at least 12 to 18 months to develop.

“The way that it’s possible is if you bring forward five or six different classes of candidates, which the Operation Warp Speed has done,” Birx said. “And so it’s not relying on a single vaccine platform. It’s relying on several different candidates that are made differently and act differently.”

The vaccine would also require speeding up clinical trials, she said.

CNN previously reported that the goal is to make 100 million doses of a vaccine available by November, 200 million doses by December and 300 million doses by January, according to a senior administration official.

On remdesivir: Birx described the investigational drug remdesivir as a “first step forward."

In early results from a trial sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, the drug was found to shorten the duration of illness in severely affected patients, but it had no statistically significant effect on mortality.

Birx said we’ve only seen “half the data,” but she said an independent monitoring board thought the improvement was significant enough to start giving remdesivir to patients who were previously receiving a placebo.

“So it’s a first step forward. In parallel, we have a whole series of therapeutics including plasma, and also monoclonal antibodies being worked through,” she said, referring to lab-made antibodies targeting the virus. 

Larry Kudlow, the head of the White House’s National Economic Council, told CNN there may be a need for additional stimulus aid because of Covid-19 but said there was a “pause” right now before money is sought.

Kudlow said the government still needs to execute the last package and “see what the results are.”

The President was “very keen” on a payroll tax holiday for workers and would like to see tax deductions for businesses/entertainment, as well as a shield on liabilities, Kudlow said.

Democrats have opposed such a payroll holiday.   

Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said that the protests last week in the Michigan state legislature were “devastatingly worrisome to me, personally.”

In an interview on Fox today, Birx expressed her concern about protestors exposing elderly family members to the virus because if there was an “unfortunate outcome,” those people would feel guilty.

Birx called on Americans to “protect each other, at the same time we are voicing our discontent.”

About the protests: Protesters crammed inside the capitol building where the lawmakers were meeting on Friday, demanding an end to the state's state of emergency.

About 400 to 700 people stood on the Capitol grounds, according to Michigan State Police.

The state of emergency was set to expire on Thursday. On Friday, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed executive orders that terminated the old state of emergency and put in place a new one through May 28.

Last week, Whitmer had extended the separate stay-at-home order through May 15.

White House chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow defended his initial response to the coronavirus pandemic, saying "my quote then was based on the actual facts which at the time."

Kudlow said on February 25, "we have contained this. I won't say airtight, but pretty close to airtight. We've done a good job in the United States."

At that time, the US had 53 confirmed cases, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was warning there would be "community spread in the country."

"There was hardly any cases," he added.

Kudlow said the administration was dealing with the information they had at the time.

"When the information changes, you change. We changed our strategy. So did everybody else around the world change their strategy," he said.

Watch:

Spain reported 164 deaths from Covid-19 in the last 24 hours, the lowest number in six weeks, according to new figures released by the country’s Ministry of Health on Sunday.

The total number of deaths since the start of the pandemic in the country stands at 25,264.

Speaking at the government’s daily coronavirus technical briefing, Simón noted a “clear decrease of numbers” of new hospital and intensive care unit admissions, as well as a 0.39% rise in new infections since Saturday, which are about half of the numbers of those who have recovered in the same period.  

Simón cautioned that Sunday’s markedly improved numbers could be influenced by the delayed long weekend holiday reporting from Spain’s 17 regions. 

More data: A total of 42,111 health workers have been infected by coronavirus to date, Spain’s health ministry Sunday reported, representing nearly one fifth of all cases at 19%. 

As Spain gradually begins its de-escalation from strict confinement-in-place orders in place since March 15, four islands in the Canaries and the Balearics will be the first to transition to so-called "Phase One" on Monday. During this time, a further opening up of small businesses and further lifting of restrictions on movements is expected because the islands “have not had any new cases in many days, and very few, or no new infections." 

Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson said his main priority is to keep people safe as some lockdown measures in Texas began to ease on Friday.

People in Dallas are “putting their toe back in" and "aren't pouring back into these restaurants and into movie theaters and malls and things because they don't feel like it's safe to do so," Johnson said.

The mayor also expressed skepticism about the prospects of a speedy return to the “normal” of three months ago, as President Trump has suggested would be possible. Johnson called that prospect "unrealistic."

“It's impossible to say what we think is going to happen in the next few months. But I think this, I think it's unrealistic to believe that we're going to be able to be shoulder to shoulder here anymore soon," Johnson said.

Despite meat processing plants across the US shutting down due to coronavirus concerns, for now, you can still find plenty of meat in the grocery stores.

One thing you can't find on the shelves is flour. Stores are cleaned out and it's not currently available on most websites. But why is that?

Carey Underwood, who is director of mission-driven partnerships and programs at King Arthur Flour, said it's because people have been baking a lot.

Underwood said the shortage in grocery stores is because of the spike in demand for flour, not because there is a shortage of wheat.

"The demand for all signature flours, but especially all-purpose and bread flours, is simply unprecedented and is outpacing the inventory in our warehouses," she said.

Underwood added: "The wheat is available, but it must be milled, bagged, and transported to warehouses. These steps simply take time and the flour is selling out again as quickly as it reaches shelves."

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